Juan Fortea, MD PhD

JAD profile

Affiliation(s): 

Hospital of Sant Pau

Areas of Interest: 

Alzheimer´s disease, Alzheimer's disease in Down syndrom, Down syndrome, neuroimaging, cerebrospinal fluid biomarkers

Biography & Research: 

Dr. Juan Fortea is a behavioral neurologist and a dementia expert. He combines his research and clinical activities between the Memory Unit of the Hospital de la Santa Creu i Sant Pau (HSP) where he leads the neuroimaging unit and his work as Adult Medical Director at Down Medical Center of the Catalan Foundation for Down Syndrome (FCSD), both in Barcelona. Dr. Fortea completed his medical studies at the University of Cantabria in 2003 where he obtained the bachelor´s special award. He did his residency in neurology at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona between 2004 and 2008, where he also obtained the MSD residency special award. He continued his training in behavioural neurology with a fellowship in the Alzheimer’s Disease and other cognitive disorders Unit at Hospital Clinic in Barcelona between 2008 and 2011, a period in which he did his PhD at the University of Barcelona (2011). In 2011, he obtained a faculty position at the Memory Unit of the HSP where he is responsible for neuroimaging. Both his clinical and research activities have been focused on the treatment and study of neurodegenerative diseases. Specifically, Dr. Fortea has specialized in the study of Alzheimer's disease biomarkers, describing the experimental uses of CT, PET, and MRI in characterizing human degenerative brain diseases, a field in which he has co-authored more than 50 publications in international journals, two book chapters and is a reviewer for several international journals. His main line of research is preclinical AD both in the general population and in familial AD and Down Syndrome. He has led several multimodal studies that have enabled the description of a 2-phase phenomenon of pathological cortical thickening associated with brain amyloidosis, followed by atrophy once CSF p-tau becomes abnormal.