The Movement Disorder Society (MDS) is an international professional society of clinicians, scientists, and other healthcare professionals who are interested in Parkinson's disease, related neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders, hyperkinetic Movement Disorders and abnormalities in muscle tone and motor control. The field of Movement Disorders includes the following areas: Parkinson's disease and Parkinsonism, ataxia, dystonia, chorea and Huntington's disease, tics and Tourette syndrome, myoclonus and startle, restless leg syndrome, stiff person syndrome, tremor and essential tremor, and gait disorders.[1]
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MDS consists of more than 3,500 clinicians, scientists and other healthcare professionals from more than 90 countries. Many are renowned in the Movement Disorders field.
Dr. Joseph Jankovic, Professor of Neurology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas, was featured in USA Today in 2008 for his work to obtain FDA approval to treat people with Huntington's disease with the drug tetrabenazine. [2]
Another member, Prof. Bastiaan Bloem, of the Radboud University Nijmegen Medical Center in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, was featured by PRI's The World Science in April 2010 in an article titled "Engineering the Climate, Cycling with Parkinson’s Disease." [3]
Dr. Mark Lew, Director of the Movement Disorders Division and Professor of Neurology at the USC Healthcare Consultant Center in Los Angeles, was interviewed by Today Show host Meredith Vieira in April 2009 for a story about a young woman battling dystonia. [4]
MDS members include many published authors of books covering a wide range of topics in movement disorders, including Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, tremor, dystonia, Deep Brain stimulation (DBS), among others.[5]
MDS members Dr. Michael Pourfar, director, Movement Disorders Center, Cushing Neuroscience Institute, Great Neck, NY; and Dr. John Duda, assistant professor, neurology, Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, recently wrote an article that appeared on MedlinePlus, discussing videos on YouTube that depict various movement disorders. [6]
MDS Member Dr. Rajeev Kumar, medical director of the Colorado Neurological Institute's Movement Disorders Center in Denver, was interviewed in a story abuot NFL Hall of Famer Forrest Gregg, who announced in late 2011 that he has Parkinson' disease. A story about Gregg's announcement was published by the AP: [7]
MDS was founded in 1985 on the initiative of Professors Stanley Fahn and C. David Marsden. The organization merged in 1988 with the International Medical Society for Motor Disturbances. The Society has held the annual International Congress of Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders since 1990.
MDS publishes 16 issues of the journal Movement Disorders annually which is published by Wiley-Blackwell.[8]. Subscribers also receive supplements on special topics. The MDS website houses a complete library of movement disorders videos that accompany articles in the Journal, as well as forums for discussion of unique cases in movement disorders.
Movement Disorders is a highly read and referenced journal covering all topics of the field – both clinical and basic science. The Journal ranks 27 out of 185 Clinical Neurology titles with an Impact Factor of 4.48 for 2010, versus the 2009 figure of 4.014 (ISI Journal Citation Reports 2010).
Likewise, the most recently reported Eigenfactor[9], which is a measure of the influence a journal exerts on scholarly literature, is 0.04417.