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Juan Fortea, MD PhD
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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.