Jürgen Braun (rheumatologist)

Jürgen Braun (born September 2, 1953 in Düsseldorf ) is a German rheumatologist . Since January 1st 2001 he has been head of the Rheumazentrum Ruhrgebiet in Herne. From January 1, 2011 to December 31, 2012 he was President of the German Society for Rheumatology . He is currently the 2nd Vice President of the DGRh and the scientific director of the Rheumaakademie.

Career

After attending the Am Grund elementary school in Düsseldorf-Lohausen, Braun switched to the state Max Planck Gymnasium in Düsseldorf-Stockum in 1964 , where he graduated in 1972. After a few semesters of philosophy, theater studies, German and Romance studies at the universities in Cologne and Düsseldorf , he began intensive travel activities in 1975, which, in addition to some Western European countries, took him to the then Eastern Bloc, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, Nepal, led the United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Peru, Bolivia, Tunisia, and Algeria. In Düsseldorf he lived with the artists Andreas Gursky and Thomas Schönauer. He traveled to India in 1975 together with the current art professor Bogomir Ecker . The American trip together with Thomas Schönauer and Michael Langer, a Düsseldorf artist, and his old friend Giora Seeliger, who has lived in Vienna for many years, where he worked for a long time at the Max Reinhardt Seminar. As a trained clown (Yves le Breton school in Paris), Giora Seeliger co-founded the organization of the 'Red Noses', for which he was awarded the Order of the Garter of the Austrian State.

In 1977 Jürgen Braun changed his place of residence and moved to Berlin and after several hospital internships decided to finally study human medicine. To finance his livelihood and his travels, he carried out various activities in various other areas such as gastronomy. One day after his license to practice medicine on May 14, 1985, he began his 15-year career as a research assistant in the Department of General Internal Medicine and Nephrology at the Benjamin Franklin University Hospital at the Free University of Berlin (Head of Distler). Here he did his doctorate in 1987 on a topic on vascular resistance in hypertensive patients , under the guidance of Karl Schulte, before concentrating on rheumatology from 1988 . He then worked very closely with J. Sieper at the Benjamin Franklin University Hospital in the field of rheumatology until the end of 2000.

Braun completed his habilitation in internal medicine at the Free University of Berlin in 1995; in 2000 he received an adjunct professorship at the Benjamin Franklin University Hospital in Berlin. At the beginning of 2001 he became the medical director of the Rheumazentrum Ruhrgebiet and at the same time received a visiting professorship in rheumatology at the Free University of Berlin. In 2002 he was appointed to the C3 professorship in rheumatology at the University of Regensburg and in 2004 he was a visiting professor in Toronto. Since August 2004 he has been Professor of Rheumatology at the Ruhr University in Bochum. As President of the DGRh, he organized the 40th annual congress of the professional association in Bochum in 2012. In 2014 he received the Franziskus Blondel Medal from the city of Aachen. Since October 8, 2018, Braun has also held the first chair for rheumatology at the Ruhr University Bochum, the official location at Marienhospital Herne.

Researches

Together with Joachim Sieper, he initially worked scientifically on reactive arthritis before, in 1994, together with Matthias Bollow, he was one of the first to report on the advantages of magnetic resonance imaging in diagnosing spondyloarthritis patients with sacroiliitis and spondylitis (1998). On the basis of immunohistological investigations on biopsy specimens from the sacroiliac joint of patients with ankylosing spondylitis , he found that the inflammatory cytokine TNF-α plays an important role in this. This work formed the basis for his habilitation in 1995 and subsequently for his extraordinary professorship in 2000. On the basis of these theoretical results, Braun was the first in the world to successfully use antibodies against TNF-α for the treatment of patients with ankylosing spondylitis. The data from the first placebo-controlled randomized study were published in 2003 in the journal The Lancet . In the same year, Braun published for the first time a scoring system for magnetic resonance imaging of the spine, with which the inflammation in patients with ankylosing spondylitis can be quantified in this area.

Braun has published more than 600 publications in recognized journals, mainly on the clinical picture of so-called spondyloarthritis, in particular on axial spondyloarthritis including ankylosing spondylitis, but also on rheumatoid arthritis and other rheumatological, immunological and osteological topics.

Honors

• 2000: Carol Nachman Prize of the City of Wiesbaden
• 2003: EULAR Award

Fonts

• with R. van den Berg, X. Baraliakos, H. Boehm, R. Burgos-Vargas, E. Collantes-Estevez, H. Dagfinrud, B. Dijkmans, M. Dougados, P. Emery, P. Geher, M. Hammoudeh , R. Inman, M. Jongkees, M. Khan, U. Kiltz, T. Kvien, M. Leirisalo-Repo, W. Maksymowych, I. Olivieri, K. Pavelka, J. Sieper, E. Stanislawska-Biernat, D Wendling, S. Ozgocmen, C. van Jungs, B. van Royen and D. van der Heijde: 2010 update of the ASAS / EULAR recommendations for the management of ankylosing spondylitis. In: Ann Rheum Dis . 70 (6), 2011 Jun, pp. 896-904.
• with E. Genth, for the board of the DGRh: Read we forget: Statement by the German Rheumatology Society (DGRh) on the national socialist crimes against Jewish colleagues. In: Z Rheumatol. 2010 Oct 14. [Epub ahead of print]
• with X. Baraliakos, J. Listing, M. Rudwaleit and J. Sieper: Development of a radiographic scoring tool for ankylosing spondylitis only based on bone formation: Addition of the thoracic spine improves sensitivity to change. In: Arthritis Rheum . 61 (6), 2009 May 28, pp. 764-771. [Epub ahead of print]
• with J. Sieper: Ankylosing spondylitis. In: The Lancet . 369, 2007, pp. 1379-1390.
• with R. Landewe, KG Hermann, J. Han, S. Yan, P. Williamson and D. van der Heijde: Major reduction in spinal inflammation in patients with ankylosing spondylitis after treatment with infliximab: Results of a multicenter, randomized, double- blind, placebo-controlled magnetic resonance imaging study. In: Arthritis Rheum. 54 (5), 2006 Apr 27, pp. 1646-1652. [Epub ahead of print]
• with J. Brandt, J. Listing, W. Golder, R. Alten, GR Burmester, E. Gromnica-Ihle, H. Kellner, M. Schneider, H. Sörensen, H. Zeidler, W. Thriene and J. Sieper: Treatment of active ankylosing spondylitis with infliximab - a double-blind placebo controlled multicenter trial. In: Lancet. April 6th 359, 2002, pp. 1187-1193.
• J. Brandt, H. Haibel, D. Cornely, W. Golder, J. Gonzalez, J. Reddig, W. Thriene, J. Sieper: Successful treatment of active ankylosing spondylitis with the anti-tumor necrosis factor alpha monoclonal antibody infliximab. In: Arthritis Rheum. 43 (6), 2000 Jun, pp. 1346-1352.
• with M. Bollow, G. Remlinger, U. Eggens, M. Rudwaleit, A. Distler and J. Sieper: Prevalence of spondylarthropathies in HLA-B27 positive and negative blood donors. In: Arthritis Rheum. 41 (1), 1998 Jan, pp. 58-67.
• with M. Bollow and J. Sieper: Radiologic diagnosis and pathology of the spondyloarthropathies. In: Rheum Dis Clin North Am. 24 (4), 1998 Nov, pp. 697-735.
• with M. Bollow, F. Seyrekbasan, HJ Haberle, U. Eggens, A. Mertz, A. Distler and J. Sieper: Computed tomography guided corticosteroid injection of the sacroiliac joint in patients with spondyloarthropathy with sacroiliitis: clinical outcome and followup by dynamic magnetic resonance imaging. In: J Rheumatol. 1996 Apr 23 (4), pp. 659-664.
• with M. Bollow, L. Neure, E. Seipelt, F. Seyrekbasan, H. Herbst, U. Eggens, A. Distler and J. Sieper: Use of immunohistologic and in situ hybridization techniques in the examination of sacroiliac joint biopsy specimens from patients with ankylosing spondylitis. In: Arthritis Rheum. 38 (4), 1995 Apr, pp. 499-505.
• with M. Bollow, U. Eggens, H. Konig, A. Distler and J. Sieper: Use of dynamic magnetic resonance imaging with fast imaging in the detection of early and advanced sacroiliitis in spondylarthropathy patients. In: Arthritis Rheum. 37 (7), 1994 Jul, pp. 1039-1045.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} “Therapy with foresight: Considering and treating rheumatism from an interdisciplinary perspective” , press conference of the 38th DGRh congress (Memento from 2011); CV on p. 24
2. ↑ bechterew.de
3. ↑ ard.bmj.com