Cynthia Gagnon

Cynthia Gagnon profile picture

Investigator

Professor, Sherbrooke University Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences

Visiting Professor, uOttawa and CHEO-RI


NMD4C Working Group(s): Expert Patient Capacity Building, Knowledge Translation

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Biography

Cynthia is a senior career-award researcher specializing in adult genetic neuromuscular disorders. She holds a professorial appointment at the School of Rehabilitation at the University of Sherbrooke. She is the scientific director of the Groupe de recherche interdisciplinaire sur les maladies neuromusculaires (GRIMN) and is a researcher at the Centre de recherche Charles-Le Moyne-Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean sur les innovations en santé.

Cynthia trained as an occupational therapist at McGill University. She has a doctoral degree in experimental medicine from Laval University and pursued a postdoctoral fellowship in program evaluation at Montreal University. Her work aims at improving clinical care and speeding up trial readiness in the most prevalent neuromuscular diseases in Canada. Her main interest is to document the natural history of the disease through an interdisciplinary perspective to be able to document the progression of the disease and to identify significant predictor and explanatory factors related to participation in daily activities and social roles of patients such as work and autonomous living. Her other interest is to define the best outcome measures to assess potential therapeutic targets such as muscle strength, fatigue or cognitive functions. She also works on developing knowledge translation strategies related to rare diseases to ensure effective and just-in-time knowledge translation to the interdisciplinary team through different strategies including wiki, articles, clinical practice guidelines to improve clinical care for patients and their families.

She is involved in several international projects in relation to myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1), oculopharyngeal muscular dystrophy (OPMD) and autosomal recessive spastic ataxia of Charlevoix-Saguenay (ARSACS).

Within NMD4C, Cynthia is lead for knowledge translation.


Recent Publications

Laberge, L, Maltais, A, Auclair, J, Mathieu, J, Gagnon, C. Evolution of sleep complaints in myotonic dystrophy type 1: a 9-year longitudinal study. Can J Neurol Sci. 2023. 1-10 PMID:36927489

Nguyen, CDL, Jimenez-Moreno, AC, Merker, M, Bowers, CJ, Nikolenko, N, Hentschel, A et al.. Periostin as a blood biomarker of muscle cell fibrosis, cardiomyopathy and disease severity in myotonic dystrophy type 1. J Neurol. 2023. PMID:36892629

Lessard, I, Masterman, V, Côté, I, Gagnon, C, Duchesne, E. A rehabilitation program to increase balance and mobility in ataxia of Charlevoix-Saguenay: An exploratory study. PLoS One. 2022.17 (12)e0279406 PMID:36576926

Fisette-Paulhus, I, Gagnon, C, Morin, M. Prevalence of urinary incontinence and other pelvic floor disorders in women with myotonic dystrophy type 1. Neuromuscul Disord. 2023.33 (1)32-39 PMID:36543698

Raymond, K, Gagnon, C, Levasseur, M. Multiple Case Study of Changes in Participation of Adults with Myotonic Dystrophy Type 1: Importance of Redesigning Accomplishment and Resilience. J Neuromuscul Dis. 2022.9 (6)731-755 PMID:36214003

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