Richard L. Guerrant

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Richard L. Guerrant (* 1943 ) is an American medical doctor who specializes in infectious diseases and tropical medicine.

Guerrant studied at Davidson College and the University of Virginia School of Medicine and completed his residency in internal medicine and infectious diseases at Harvard Medical Service at Boston City Hospital, where he was a student of Maxwell Finland . He then did cholera field research in Bangladesh on behalf of Johns Hopkins University . He then went back to the University of Virginia. He became a professor there and is the founding director of the Center for Global Health.

Guerrant studied gastrointestinal pathogens after observing the devastating effects of diarrheal diseases on children in developing countries in field studies in the Congo (and later in Brazil, South Africa and Bangladesh) in the 1960s. Among other things, he researched how the toxins from cholera and enterotoxigenic Escherichia coli (ETEC) lead to diarrhea. He clarified the mode of action of the toxins from ETEC and on this basis developed an oral therapy (ORRT) for children who are afflicted with this cholera-like diarrhea. In 1997 he was named Henderson Innovator of the Year at the University of Virginia. In field studies, particularly in Brazil, he investigated the developmental delays of children who were exposed to diarrheal diseases in the critical first years of their lives. He showed that this led to stunted growth and loss of cognitive skills. The cognitive effects, which accounted for up to 10 IQ points, were not of a phonetic, but of a semantic nature, similar in Alzheimer's patients. He also found that it is precisely the Alzheimer's risk gene, ApoE4 , that protects children against this loss of cognitive abilities in diarrhea, which is a possible explanation for the spread of these genes. He continues to pursue the research with funding from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

He is co-editor of a standard work on tropical diseases and wrote a book about his experiences in Brazil.

In 2014 he received the Maxwell Finland Award . He received the Walter Reed Medal and was President of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene (ASTMH). In 2010 he received the Thomas Jefferson Award from the University of Virginia (its highest honor). In 2012 he became an Outstanding Scientist of Virginia.

Fonts

  • Editor with David Walker, Peter Weller: Tropical Infectious Diseases: Principles, Pathogens, and Practices, 2 volumes, Churchill Livingston 2005
  • Edited with M. Auxiliadora De Souza, Marilyn K. Nations: At the Edge of Development: Health Crises in a Transitional Society, Carolina Academic Press 1996

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Similar to the role of sickle cell anemia as protection against malaria and the gene for cystic fibrosis as protection against cholera and other diarrheal diseases
personal data
SURNAME Guerrant, Richard L.
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American medic
DATE OF BIRTH 1943