Dr. Erik Niks is consultant pediatric and adult neurologist at Leiden University Medical Center (LUMC), the Dutch Expert Center for Becker and Duchenne muscular dystrophy (BMD and DMD), Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD), and Acquired Neuromuscular Junction Diseases.
After finishing his neurology training, he did a fellowship in myology funded by the Dutch Prinses Beatrix Fonds which included an honorary fellowship at Dubowitz Neuromuscular Centre at Great Ormond Street Hospital, London in 2010. He performed clinical, immunological, and epidemiological studies in seronegative and MuSK antibody positive myasthenia gravis in the Netherlands as part of his PhD.
At LUMC, he coordinates the multidisciplinary clinical care for children with neuromuscular diseases. He is also principal investigator at LUMC for clinical trials in pediatric and adult muscular dystrophies as well as in pediatric myasthenia gravis. Dr. Niks is currently chair of the Duchenne Centre Netherlands.
The focus of research has been on developing outcome measures for Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy. These included parameters on muscle function, especially with quantitative muscle imaging, but also on circulating biomarkers. A second focus is on the cognitive phenotype-genotype correlations of patients with Duchenne and Becker muscular dystrophy for which he currently participates in the European BIND consortium. For all of these studies, inclusion of the complete spectrum of the disease is essential and dr. Niks is therefore committed as supervisor of the nationwide patient registries for the dystrophinopathies and LGMD in the Netherlands. He also coordinates the NFU Parelsnoer Institute project on DMD and BMD which consists of a collaboration between the academic neuromuscular centers in the Netherlands to establish a biobank that contains standardised clinical assessments and biomaterials of pediatric and adult patients.
