Dr. Gilbert Hosts: Parkinson’s Disease & the Environment with Dr. Carlie Tanner

Caroline M. Tanner, MD, PhD, FAAN, trained in neurology and movement disorders at Rush University in Chicago. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She directed clinical research at the Parkinson’s Institute from 1990-2013. She is now Professor of Neurology at the University of California, San Francisco and the Associate Director at the Parkinson’s Disease Research Education and Clinical Center at the San Francisco VA.

Dr. Tanner’s clinical practice specializes in movement disorders. Her research interests include descriptive epidemiology, environmental and genetic determinants, biomarkers, early detection, non-motor disease features and trials for the secondary prevention, disease modification and symptomatic treatment of movement disorders and neurodegenerative diseases. She is past co-chair of the Parkinson Study Group (PSG) and has conducted numerous clinical trials with PSG and others. Dr. Tanner and her colleagues have identified associations between exposures including certain pesticides, solvents and persistent environmental pollutants and increased risk of Parkinson’s disease, and identified gene-environment interactions. She is the principal investigator of the Fox Insight online study. She serves on the executive steering committee of the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative (PPMI) study and leads the prospective online data collection.