Dr. Simon Hellwig is a resident at the Department of Neurology with Experimental Neurology at Charité Campus Benjamin Franklin and a member of the junior research group "Integrative Cardio-Neurology" at the Center for Stroke Research Berlin with Prof. Dr. Jan Scheitz. At the same time, he is a fellow in the Clinician Scientist Program of the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH).
In their work, Simon Hentschel and his colleagues were able to show that there was an association between an elevated troponin level on hospital admission and the occurrence of major cardiovascular events in patients with mild to moderate ischemic stroke (minor stroke) or transient ischemic stroke (TIA) over an average follow-up period of 3 years. When the protein troponin was elevated, a comparable event rate was found in the patient group that was actually classified as low-risk according to established risk scores as in the high-risk group. If the results can be replicated, the determination of troponin after stroke could be useful in the future to identify a high-risk group that would not be classified as such using traditional risk scores.
The award was given to Dr. Simon Hellwig for his work "Cardiac Troponin and Recurrent Major Vascular Events after Minor Stroke or Transient Ischemic Attack", which was recently published in the journal "Annals of Neurology". With the prize, which has been awarded annually since 2011, the Würzburg-based Hentschel Foundation honors scientific findings on the prevention, diagnosis or therapy of stroke. The prize is awarded to young scientists (age limit 40 years) who have demonstrated outstanding achievements in stroke research.