Gastroenteritis,also known as infectious diarrhea or simply as gastro,is an inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract including the stomach and intestine. Symptoms may include diarrhea,vomiting,and abdominal pain. Fever,lack of energy,and dehydration may also occur. This typically lasts less than two weeks. Although it is not related to influenza,in the U.S. it is sometimes called the "stomach flu".
The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH),an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NIAID's mission is to conduct basic and applied research to better understand,treat,and prevent infectious,immunologic,and allergic diseases.
Colin Munro MacLeod was a Canadian-American geneticist. He was one of a trio of scientists who discovered that deoxyribonucleic acid,or DNA is responsible for the transformation of the physical characteristics of bacteria,which subsequently led to its identification as the molecule responsible for heredity.
Harvey James Alter is an American medical researcher,virologist,physician and Nobel Prize laureate,who is best known for his work that led to the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. Alter is the former chief of the infectious disease section and the associate director for research of the Department of Transfusion Medicine at the Warren Grant Magnuson Clinical Center in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda,Maryland. In the mid-1970s,Alter and his research team demonstrated that most post-transfusion hepatitis cases were not due to hepatitis A or hepatitis B viruses. Working independently,Alter and Edward Tabor,a scientist at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration,proved through transmission studies in chimpanzees that a new form of hepatitis,initially called "non-A,non-B hepatitis" caused the infections,and that the causative agent was probably a virus. This work eventually led to the discovery of the hepatitis C virus in 1988,for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2020 along with Michael Houghton and Charles M. Rice.
Albert Zaven Kapikian (1930–2014) was an Armenian-American virologist who developed the first licensed vaccine against rotavirus,the most common cause of severe diarrhea in infants. He was awarded the Sabin Gold Medal for his pioneering work on the vaccine. He is the 13th recipient of this recognition,awarded annually by the Sabin Vaccine Institute. Called the father of human gastroenteritis virus research,Kapikian identified the first norovirus,initially called Norwalk virus,in 1972;and he and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Health identified the hepatitis A virus in 1973.
Thomas Henry Flewett,MD,FRCPath,FRCP was a founder member of the Royal College of Pathologists and was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of London in 1978. He was chairman of the World Health Organization (WHO) Steering Committee on Viral Diarrhoeal Diseases,1990–3,and a member until 1996. His laboratory in Birmingham was a World Health Organization Reference and Research Centre for Rotavirus Infections from 1980 until his retirement in 1987. He was an external examiner,visiting lecturer,and scientific journal editor. He was a member of the board of the Public Health Laboratory Service from 1977 to 1983 and was chairman of the Public Health Laboratory Service's Committee on Electron Microscopy from 1977 to 1987.
The rotavirus vaccine is a vaccine used to protect against rotavirus infections,which are the leading cause of severe diarrhea among young children. The vaccines prevent 15–34% of severe diarrhea in the developing world and 37–96% of the risk of death among young children due to severe diarrhea. Immunizing babies decreases rates of disease among older people and those who have not been immunized.
Since 1994,the Albert B. Sabin Gold Medal has been awarded annually by the Sabin Vaccine Institute in recognition of work in the field of vaccinology or a complementary field. It is in commemoration of the pioneering work of Albert B. Sabin.
Richard Alan Cash,M.D.,M.P.H. is an American global health researcher,public health physician,and internist. He is a Senior Lecturer in International Health at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.
Robert Palmer Beasley was a physician,public health educator and epidemiologist whose work on hepatitis B involved extensive investigations in Taiwan. That work established that hepatitis B virus (HBV) is a primary cause of liver cancer and that hepatitis B virus is transmitted from mother to infant during childbirth. Beasley and his colleagues also proved that HBV mother-to-infant transmission is preventable by at-birth vaccination. Due to this work,the World Health Assembly designated HBV as the seventh global vaccine in 1992. He later became the author of HBV immunization policies for the World Health Organization.
Ira M. Longini is an American biostatistician and infectious disease epidemiologist.
Edward Thomas Ryan is an American microbiologist,immunologist,and physician at Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. Ryan served as president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene from 2009 to 2010. Ryan is Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health,Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School,and Director of Global Infectious Diseases at the Massachusetts General Hospital. Ryan's research and clinical focus has been on infectious diseases associated with residing in,immigrating from,or traveling through resource-limited areas. Ryan is a Fellow of the American Society of Microbiology,the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene,the American College of Physicians,and the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
William A. Petri is a physician-scientist at the University of Virginia School of Medicine and the Wade Hampton Frost Professor of Epidemiology. He is a member of the Association of American Physicians and the American Society for Clinical Investigation,both medical honor societies recognizing distinguished physicians. Petri is the past president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and has been elected a fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. He developed an FDA-approved test to detect amebiasis,and later,with significant funding from NIH,developed a vaccine program. He is the highest funded researcher in the School of Medicine. Under his leadership,the division's annual research funding has increased from 0.5 million to $19 million,making it the highest externally-funded program at the university.
Gerald T. Keusch is an American physician-scientist and academic administrator. Keusch is the associate provost for global health at Boston University Medical Campus and a professor of international health and medicine at Boston University School of Public Health. He was the director of John E. Fogarty International Center and the associate director of international research at the National Institutes of Health from 1998 to 2003.
John Glenn Morris,Jr. is an American physician and epidemiologist. He is the founding and current director of the Emerging Pathogens Institute,an interdisciplinary research facility located within the University of Florida,having served since 2007.
Richard Michael Krause was an American physician,microbiologist,and immunologist. He was the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases from 1975 to 1984. Krause later served as the dean of medicine at Emory University before returning to National Institutes of Health as a senior scientific advisor at the John E. Fogarty International Center. Krause was formerly a longtime professor at Rockefeller University.
Shabir Ahmed Madhi is a South African physician who is professor of vaccinology and director of the South African Medical Research Council Respiratory and Meningeal Pathogens Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand,and National Research Foundation/Department of Science and Technology Research Chair in Vaccine Preventable Diseases. In January 2021,he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of the Witwateratand.
Herbert "Bert" Lancashire DuPont is an American physician,medical school professor,and medical researcher,specializing in infectious diseases.
Lone Simonsen is a Danish epidemiologist and professor of population health sciences. Since the beginning of 2020,she has been the director of PandemiX,an interdisciplinary pandemic research center at Roskilde University. In 2023 PandemiX was established as a Center of Excellence funded by the Danish National Research Foundation.
Minnie Mariam Mathan is a pathologist,a pioneer in India in gastrointestinal ultrastructure research and medical administrator. She pioneered studies in the pathogenesis of intestinal lesions in tropical sprue and of the rotavirus as an important cause of acute diarrhea in Indian children.
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