An international symposium “Integrated Treatment Protocol for Management of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy” was held at Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences on August 31, 2019. This was organized by Dr. P. Rammanohar, Research Director, School of Ayurveda, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, along with our School of Medicine at Kochi, and included Prof. Antonella Delle Fave, Department of Pathophysiology and Transplantation, University of Milan “La Statale”, Italy.

Both Amrita (Dr. Rammanohar, Amrita School of Ayurveda) and Milan (Prof. Antonella Delle Fave) had received a Indo-Italy POC grant jointly funded by the Italian Ministry for International Cooperation and Department of Science and Technology (DST), Government of India, titled “An Integrated Approach to the Treatment of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy and Spinal Muscular Atrophy”. The major aim of this collaborative exchange project was to design an integrated treatment protocol including standard conventional care, Ayurveda and psychological counselling addressed to patients with DMD and SMA.

At the symposium on August 31, 2019, the resource persons included Dr. K. P. Vinayan (Pediatric Neurologist, Amrita Institute of Medical Sciences, Kochi), Dr. B. R. Lakshmi (Director, Molecular Diagnostics, Counseling, Care and Research Centre (MDCRC)), Dr. Vijith Sasidhar (Managing Director, Sree Krishna Ayurveda Chikitsa Kendram), Dr. Preetha Menon (Assistant Professor (SG), Amrita Centre for Spiritual Studies), Dr. Ananthram Sharma ( Professor, Amrita School of Ayurveda), Dr. James Chacko (Professor, Amrita School of Ayurveda), Minsha (Research Officer, Amrita School of Ayurveda), Dr. Antonella Delle Fave (Professor, University of Milan) and Dr. Rammanohar (Research Director, Amrita School of Ayurveda).

During her trip to India this time, Prof. Antonella Delle Fave also visited other laboratories and extended ongoing discussions on research and extensions in phytochemistry, pharmacology, neurology, biotechnology, nanomedicine and computational neuroscience.