 he long history of nursing education at Emory took another giant step forward in March as the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing dedicated the "right building at the right place at the right time" in a ceremony filled with nostalgia, gutsy optimism, and reaffirmation of Emory's 97-year commitment to nursing.
A reception, tours, and accolades by alumni marked the celebration, along with fond remembrances from "Little Nell" (Nell Woodruff Hodgson Watt, niece of the school's namesake) about her aunt and uncle Robert W. Woodruff and their interest in nursing education. Open since January, the $22 million, 100,000-square-foot structure at 1520 Clifton Road is the first building to be completed under the Woodruff Health Sciences Center's (WHSC) strategic plan, initiated by Executive Vice President for Health Affairs Michael Johns, and the university's campus master plan. The five-story marble and stucco structure reflects the traditional Hornbostel architecture so familiar on the university's main quadrangle. The new structure serves as a gateway to the Clifton Corridor and Emory's health sciences research complex and reflects the master plan's focus on restoring a pedestrian environment to campus. It is linked underground and by walkways to its neighbors -- the Grace Crum Rollins Public Health Building, the O.Wayne Rollins Research Center, the Joseph P. Whitehead Medical Research Building (now under construction), and the dental school building, which houses the Health Sciences Center Library. Inside the new nursing building is a student lounge designed for informal gatherings and access to classrooms and computer and simulation labs. Offices for research teams, including doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, are near faculty offices to foster collaboration. A three-story education pavilion projects from the back of the main structure and includes a lecture hall for 160, a case study room for 124, and two 70-seat classrooms. All told, classrooms and lecture halls can accommodate nearly 700 people from nursing, medicine, and public health. The official launch was yet another milestone for nursing education at Emory, which has continued to reinvent itself even as many of its counterparts across the country are struggling with diminishing enrollments. The school began in 1905 as the Wesley Memorial Hospital Training School for Nurses and moved with the hospital (which eventually became Emory University Hospital) from downtown to become part of the new university. The school has since graduated some 5,000 nurses. Dedication was a day that had been in the making for a decade. The school's former headquarters on Asbury Circle, designed in the late 1960s with an emphasis on traditional hospital-based practice and graduate programs in administration and teaching, was overflowing -- some offices were even squeezed into remodeled closets. To be more in tune with the changing profession of nursing, leaders decided that the school needed a doctoral program, new faculty, and new space for up-to-date clinical instruction and research. Emory Hospital agreed to purchase the 531 Asbury Circle building for a future hospital tower. The rest of the financing came from matching funds from the university and from other organizations and individuals. The new building comes at a time when the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing is growing, has new leadership, a new PhD program, and new emphasis on being a full partner in the WHSC's thriving research enterprise. Moving into this new home, which was built under budget and ahead of schedule, was yet another auspicious new beginning -- one that Little Nell called "just awesome." Read more about the school at www.nursing.emory.edu. |
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reating a diver whose chest has been impaled by a garfish can be tricky, especially in a remote place like the Solomon Islands. But thanks to a new telemedicine project, Emory radiologist Srinivasan Mukundan recently helped a local doctor diagnose a hemopneumothorax from 16 time zones away.
In a simple, yet effective version of telemedicine, digital cameras and e-mail are linking Emory specialists with physicians and medical students in isolated areas of the world. Referrals have run the gamut -- from broken bones and skin problems to metastatic lung cancer. During the past year, Mukundan has facilitated about 30 e-mail referrals to Emory specialists from local physicians and medical students in the Solomon Islands. British military surgeon Lt. Colonel David Vassallo first used digital cameras to confer with specialists in 1997 during the war in Kosovo. Vassallo and School of Medicine Professor Ken Walker later developed the Emory telemedicine link. Vassallo recently reported on the project to Emory medical school administrators and presented two digital cameras to Executive Associate Dean Jonas Shulman for medical students doing fieldwork in developing nations. The cameras, donated by a British group called the Swinfen Charitable Trust, will allow medical students to consult with Emory physicians back home on difficult cases. The Swinfen Trust, recently formed by Lord Roger and Lady Patricia Swinfen, has sponsored placement of digital cameras in Bangladesh, Nepal, and the Falkland and Solomon Islands. |
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 ore than 100 faculty and staff wrote to Congress in support of an appropriations bill providing a 15% increase for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and increase in Pell grants and other health and education programs. When a call for help went out in the e-mail Momentum Update in December, many saw the possibility the bill could fall victim to Congress' overspent budget. Instead the NIH received an across-the-board increase of 15%, maintaining the momentum for doubling the budget every five years to take full advantage of great advances in science.
The fiscal year 2001 NIH budget is projected to be about $20.3 billion. Betty Willis, Emory's associate vice president of governmental and community affairs, says the outpouring of support from Emory made a difference among our elected officials. |
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 fforts to bring pain relief to sickle cell patients are just a touch of a Palm away.
In ongoing research at Grady Hospital, hematologist and director of the Georgia Comprehensive Sickle Cell Center James Eckman and program coordinator Allan Platt have designed a pain assessment tool that captures four dimensions of pain in less than a minute. Sickle cell patients record each pain episode on a Palm Pilot, a $150 handheld touch-screen computer. With the use of an electronic pen, the patient can record pain location, radiation, associated symptoms, characteristics, setting, onset, duration, and other occurrences of pain. Patients assess their pain using four numeric scales - intensity, relief, side effects, and mood - and rank the importance of each variable on a scale from 1 to 4, with 1 being least important. Patients are then presented with visual analog scales on the touch screen, with numbers from 0 to 10 and word descriptors such as least to most. Patients are prompted to select their pain level for each of the four dimensions. For each patient, more than one pain site can be documented, and each site can be assessed multiple times. Researchers found that 85% of moderately cognitively impaired patients could complete at least one measurement of current pain using the Palm Pilot. The device automatically stamps the date and time and then stores the patient entry. Later, staff can transfer the information collected on the Palm Pilots to the nursing unit desktop computer. Triad Technologies has helped incorporate this tool into an innovative system that also allows for bedside entry of vital signs, intake-output, therapy given, and patient satisfaction. The patent is pending. |
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mory plans to bring its nationally acclaimed open heart surgery program to Cobb County. Pending state approval, Emory would partner with WellStar to establish a not-for-profit open-heart surgery program at WellStar Kennestone Hospital.
Currently, Cobb residents who need open heart surgery go to Atlanta hospitals. If the program is approved, it will serve as a platform for other procedures, including angioplasty and other vascular surgery. The agreement also would bring Emory's teaching and research components into the proposed cardiothoracic surgery program, allowing WellStar Kennestone access to emerging technology in cardiac medicine. WellStar nurses and support staff would be trained by Emory staff. If the state approves the proposal by Emory and WellStar, the program could start in two years. Besides treating more than 200,000 patients a year at Kennestone, WellStar operates Cobb, Windy Hill, Douglas, and Paulding hospitals. |
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mory's schools of medicine, public health, and nursing continue to compare well to their peers. In a recent U.S. News & World Report annual ranking, the medical school placed 22 (the only one in Georgia in the top 50) and ranked 42 among primary-careŠoriented medical schools. Many of the categories of schools were not re-evaluated this year, so the Rollins School of Public Health remains at 11, the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, 32, and the physicians assistant program, 4.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) also recently ranked schools of nursing by amount of NIH research funding during the past fiscal year. Emory nursing leapt from 37 in the nation to the top 20. |
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 hile about two dozen potential AIDS vaccines are in various stages of development around the world, preliminary data strongly suggest the ones set for Phase I testing at Emory are the most promising. One vaccine was developed at Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center and the Emory Vaccine Center; the other trial will evaluate a vaccine developed by pharmaceutical giant Merck.
In the first case, researchers led by chief of microbiology and immunology Harriet Robinson have developed a multiprotein vaccine that prevented the development of AIDS in monkeys infected seven months after vaccination with a virulent immunodeficiency virus analogous to HIV. The vaccine, composed of two DNA-based vaccines followed by a modified poxvirus booster, successfully primes the immune system's memory. It provoked a strong immune response in 24 monkeys, while the four primates who were not vaccinated developed opportunistic infections associated with AIDS. The study results are reported in the March issue of Science. This relatively simple vaccine regimen protected better than any other HIV vaccine candidate to date, placing it among the most promising experimental vaccines moving toward human clinical trials. While the vaccine did not prevent infection in the vaccinated monkeys, it kept the virus at low levels -- a good sign since maintaining a chronic low-level infection prevents HIV from progressing to AIDS and reduces the risk of virus transmission. Higher viral loads are associated with greater infectiousness. All 24 vaccinated monkeys remained healthy at 28 weeks and continue to be healthy. Now that Robinson has proved that a vaccine can keep AIDS from developing, the next step is to determine how effective this vaccine is in humans. The HIV version of the vaccine will move into clinical trials in humans early next year, with funding from the National Institutes of Health and a portion of the money raised in the 2000 Alaska AIDS Vaccine Bike Ride. The first phase will focus on safety and immunogenicity (the ability to promote a protective immune response). The clinical trial core of the Emory Vaccine Center will also be one of the first sites to immunize human volunteers in Phase I clinical trials of a Merck experimental AIDS vaccine that has also produced promising preliminary data in primates. Lead researcher Mark Feinberg is "cautiously optimistic" about the vaccine's ability to raise a protective cellular immune response. Developed from selected proteins of HIV rather than the whole virus, the Merck vaccine called HIV gag DNA is designed to elicit a targeted immune response against a portion of HIV that varies the least among the different strains. The Merck vaccine Phase I clinical trial will take 18 months. Emory is one of 10 test sites nationwide which will enroll a total of 108 people in the trials. The 12 patients in the Emory trial will periodically visit the General Clinical Research Center at Emory University Hospital to have their blood drawn and be interviewed about any symptoms they may experience after vaccination. For more information on the Merck clinical trial and the Emory Vaccine Center, contact Erica Gupta at 404-727-9316. |
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 enes distinguish one individual from another, and they also regulate how single cells live, grow, and die. In some breast cancers, for example, a growth-regulator gene may turn off, contributing to tumor growth and metastasis.
Radiation oncologist Paula Vertino (below) is looking for ways to turn these growth regulators back on and keep breast cancer cells in check. Learning how to stop a process called "methylation" - the silencing of growth-regulator genes - is an important key, she says. Vertino and colleagues at the Winship Cancer Institute have discovered that a gene called TMS-1, which normally causes damaged or cancerous cells to die, is silenced by the overexpression of methyltransferase, an enzyme that serves as a marker for DNA. "In contrast to genes that are inactivated by mutation and permanently damaged, genes silenced by methylation are intact and functional," says Vertino. "In tumor cells in culture, we have been able to inhibit DNA methylation so that a silenced tumor-suppressing gene will turn back on." TMS-1 is silenced in about half of breast cancer cells, says Vertino, one of six promising young Avon scientists at Emory whose work is supported by Avon Products Breast Cancer Crusade. She plans to study the frequency of these molecular changes among different groups of patients using a bank of tumor samples donated by consenting patients from Grady and The Emory Clinic. Another gift from the Avon Foundation funded creation of the tumor bank. "We want to learn whether the methylation of TMS-1 tracks with factors like race, age, and response to tamoxifen or other treatments," she says. Normally, damaged or cancerous cells die via a chemical process called apoptosis. It is the inhibition of cell death that allows cancer cells to replicate despite their damaged genomes. If cancer researchers can learn how to reverse the silencing of apoptosis, they may find therapies that sensitize breast cancer cells to chemotherapeutic agents -- and destroy tumors. The results of Vertino's research, funded by the National Cancer Institute and the Avon Products Foundation, were reported in the Nov. 15 issue of Cancer Research. |
  Photo by Kay Hinton |
 or most people, colonoscopy is about as pleasant as running naked through a beehive. Now, there's a promising alternative.
Researchers at Emory are participating in a multisite study of a new colon screening method that uses three-dimensional CT scanning instead of a rectally inserted scope to search for polyps. If the study shows that virtual colonoscopy is as accurate and safe as the conventional method as well as more tolerable, then patients facing a colonoscopy may have a less invasive alternative in the future. By comparing images from the virtual colonoscopy with those from the conventional method, researchers will determine whether the new method satisfactorily detects polyps. "As polyps get larger, their malignant potential increases," says William Small, chief radiologist at Grady Hospital. "If virtual colonoscopy can pick up everything larger than six millimeters, I think everyone will be happy." Although patients must follow similar preparatory procedures necessary for the traditional colonoscopy, the new method is swift and virtually noninvasive. While the conventional method may take anywhere from 15 to 60 minutes, virtual colonoscopy takes less than a minute -- 25 seconds per scan. Even if proven as accurate as the conventional method, the new method will not replace the latter. Patients whose scans reveal polyps still would need to undergo regular colonoscopy to remove the growths, says gastroenterologist John Affronti. However, virtual colonoscopy could help doctors use the more invasive procedure with greater selectivity, making aggressive screening for colon cancer more efficient and effective. |
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he state has approved a plan to consolidate two aging hospitals into a smaller, single, state-of-the-art medical center in North Fulton County.
Emory Johns Creek Hospital will replace Emory Dunwoody Medical Center and the now-closed West Paces Medical Center with a four-story, 62-bed hospital. Even though EHCA, a joint venture of Emory and HCA, has been given the state go-ahead, the approval to build the $93 million hospital in Duluth is expected to be challenged by other area hospitals in a process that could take as long as two years. To be located on 30 acres near McGinnis Ferry Road and Medlock Bridge in Duluth, the proposed facility would be in the heart of a densely populated area that covers parts of Fulton, Forsyth, DeKalb, and Gwinnett counties. Residents of the affluent, high-growth area must now drive several miles to a hospital for maternity services. Besides offering maternity services, an emergency room, and an intensive care unit, the new hospital would provide a venue for medical education for family practice and gyn/ob residents from Emory. Without a challenge, the new hospital could open by fall 2003. |
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 new drug that prevents dangerous increases in blood glucose levels or "glucose spikes" in patients with type 2 diabetes has been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration. The drug Starlix (nateglinide) is the first in a new class of drugs for type 2 diabetes that stimulates early insulin secretion.
"Starlix attacks an old problem in a new way," says endocrinologist Lawrence Phillips, principal investigator of the Emory clinical trials that were part of a multi-institution study. "Recent evidence shows that the rise in glucose after meals is strongly associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease." The drug is taken in pill form before each of the three main meals of the day. It controls the rise in glucose by quickly stimulating insulin release to limit the rise in glucose after meals. "But the drug doesn't last long, so there is less risk of low blood glucose several hours later," Phillips says, noting that Starlix mimics the body's natural pattern of releasing insulin at meal times, without prolonging insulin secretion. Three separate studies involving Starlix took place at Emory, with participants ranging in age from 42 to 70 years old. Patients given Starlix appeared to have improved glucose levels and had little difficulty with low blood glucose. Diabetes is the seventh leading cause of death in the United States, with type 2 diabetes affecting up to 95% of the some 16 million Americans with the disease. Formerly regarded as a disease of the elderly, type 2 now affects a growing number of young adults as well as children. It is primarily seen in overweight people with a sedentary lifestyle. About a third of type 2 diabetics are unaware they have the disease. African-Americans, Native Americans, and Latino-Americans are at greater risk for developing type 2 diabetes. |
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he magnetic pull of a new functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner (fMRI) at Emory University Hospital is so powerful that organizers of the equipment's official unveiling decided to forgo the traditional scissors and opt instead for a "ribbon untying" ceremony.
Emory officially commissioned the state-of-the-art, $3 million 3-tesla functional magnetic resonance imager in February. Funded by the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP), the fMRI will support research into drug addiction. The new fMRI will enable scientists at Emory to better understand and literally see what happens in the brain during or following drug use, including changes in brain function, vulnerability to drug addiction, the craving that makes drug addiction so powerful, and the effectiveness of medications for drug addiction. "Once we fully understand how the brain is involved in craving, recovery, and relapse, we can develop strategies to intercede appropriately through behavior training and new medications," says pharmacologist Michael Kuhar, GRA eminent scholar and chief of neurosciences at Yerkes Primate Research Center. Another research project of Kuhar's, also funded by ONDCP, has already produced two substances that appear to end cocaine craving in monkeys. |
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ant to ditch that double chin or lose those pudgy cheeks? A pioneering new facelift technique performed at the Emory Facial Center uses sound waves to blast away facial fat cells.
The technique uses an ultrasound treatment wand to deliver high-intensity ultrasonic waves to the skin, generating heat that breaks up fat cells and tightens skin. Seth Yellin, director of the center and chief of facial plastic surgery, describes the process as "shrink wrapping" the face. The result is contouring that can last up to a decade. Sometimes called external ultrasonic lipoplasty, the technology was first used during liposuction surgery. When found to tighten the skin, it became an alternative to the traditional facelift for tissue contouring. During the outpatient procedure, saline solution injected under the skin forms a barrier between the nerves and the heat of the sound waves. A gel protects the top layer of the skin as the surgeon moves an ultrasonic treatment head over the area to be contoured for about five minutes. Heat generated by the ultrasonic waves contracts collagen proteins, causing the skin to tighten, and ruptures fat cells, which are then absorbed into the bloodstream. No hospital stay is required, and usually only Tylenol is needed to treat pain following the procedure. Afterward, patients must wear an elastic support daily for a week and nightly for several weeks. Slight improvement is seen immediately, but the full effect takes several months. For more information, call the Emory Facial Center at 404-303-0101. |
  Illustration by Ande Cook |
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mory's Vaccine Research Center has begun a series of trials that researchers hope will significantly advance progress toward an effective vaccine for malaria. The disease infects 300 to 500 million people annually and kills millions of them, mostly children.
The trials are sponsored by the Malaria Vaccine Initiative (MVI) at the Program for Appropriate Technology in Health (PATH), a nonprofit organization that conducts health programs around the world. PATH established MVI (www.malariavaccine.org) through a $50 million award by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. MVI aims to accelerate the development of promising malaria vaccine candidates and ensure their availability and accessibility for the developing world. The new relationship between Emory and MVI means that Emory will play a major role in the research and development of candidate vaccines for malaria. Over the next several years, infectious disease researcher Mary Galinski and Yerkes scientist Alberto Moreno will conduct multiple staggered trials in primates aimed at assessing the safety, dosing, and immunogenicity of several potential vaccines. "The primate trials are an important step in the development of malaria vaccines," says Galinski, who heads the trials for Emory. In conjunction with her search for viable vaccines, Galinski is studying the genetic and biological makeup of Plasmodium, the organism that causes malaria. Genetic differences among the four species of Plasmodium that infect humans have contributed to the difficulty in developing malaria vaccines. Ultimately, several vaccines will be needed to eliminate sickness caused by all four species. Galinski founded Malaria Foundation International (www.malaria.org) in 1992. This nonprofit organization seeks to support research by forming global networks that foster communication and collaboration among malaria scientists and health workers. |
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 esearchers can attribute some cases of Parkinson's disease to genetic risk factors, but the majority remain unexplained. In a recent Nature and Neuroscience article, Emory neurologist Tim Greenamyre and colleagues published findings suggesting that environmental toxins may play a role.
In Greenamyre's study, researchers intravenously administered the naturally occurring pesticide rotenone to rats over a period of several weeks. They observed gradual degeneration of the rats' dopamine neurons, accompanied by behavioral features of Parkinson's. In humans, the progressive degeneration of dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra region of the brain is what leads to the rigidity and tremors associated with Parkinson's. While the new study does not prove that rotenone causes Parkinson's in humans, it supports the idea that chronic exposure to low levels of environmental toxins, such as rotenone, may contribute to the incidence of Parkinson's disease. Greenamyre's findings also raise questions about the safety of rotenone, which is considered relatively benign compared with other pesticides and is widely used as a method of killing fish in water management programs. Before this study, the most realistic animal model of Parkinson's disease was the so-called MPTP model. In the early 1980s, a group of heroin addicts developed sudden and irreversible Parkinson's symptoms after injecting themselves with heroin contaminated by a drug known as MPTP (1,2,3,6-tetrahydropyridine). Subsequently, researchers studying MPTP-injected mice and monkeys found that Parkinson's symptoms developed because MPTP inhibits an enzyme in the mitochondria, intracellular organelles that provide the cell with energy. Rotenone, like many other pesticides, inhibits the same enzyme. An untested explanation for the presence of Parkinson's disease in Greenamyre's rats is that the pesticide causes the mitochondria to produce free radicals -- reactive chemicals that produce oxidative damage and have been implicated in many degenerative diseases. |
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 ommonly found in soy beans and dairy products, compounds called sphingolipids are used by cells to control growth, cell-to-cell communication, immune recognition, and other processes often defective in cancer. To develop anticancer drugs based on sphingolipids, Emory biochemist Alfred Merrill has been named principal investigator for a $3.8 million National Cancer Institute grant.
After feeding sphingolipids to mice, Merrill's lab found that in some cases the compound blocked the appearance of tumors in mice caused by hereditary defects or exposure to chemical carcinogens. "This new grant will focus our efforts on the next stage of research -- to use what we have learned with naturally occurring sphingolipids to develop more effective compounds for treating cancer," says Merrill. Merrill's lab will work in conjunction with researchers at the University of Georgia and Wayne State University, together forming a National Cooperative Drug Discovery Group. |
  Illustration by Don Morris |
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hile the Federal Reserve and Congress ponder how to jump-start the nation's economy, Emory has continued to infuse the city it calls home with some of its own powerful economic medicine. In addition to its academic achievements, Emory contributes some $3.4 billion directly and indirectly each year to the Atlanta economy.
Emory is the third largest employee in the Atlanta area, with a workforce of 19,000 (60% in the health sciences) and creates one out of every 50 jobs, according to a study conducted by Emory's office of the executive vice president and the chief operating officer. Emory's total economic impact has increased 39% in the past five years and 85% in the past decade. More than 70% of that economic shot in the arm comes from components of the Woodruff Health Sciences Center (WHSC). For example, last year alone, Atlantans turned to Emory Healthcare in record numbers:
In addition, Emory continues to forge ahead on its ambitious construction program, including more than $500 million in health care projects (out of $700 million total on campus) from 1994 through 2005. And don't forget the ripple effect of all that construction as well as your paycheck, patient and visitor expenditures outside the health system, and the impact of spending by students, scholars, retirees, parents, and friends. For example, overnight visitors spent a total of 499,301 days in Atlanta and $69.3 million on lodging, food, and other expenses last year. Not all of Emory's contributions can be measured in dollars. As the health care provider of the WHSC, Emory Healthcare consistently rates as one of the nation's best. Through its research, Emory also is contributing new knowledge toward improving the human condition. And community partnerships - from health care and housing, child advocacy and counseling, to cultural offerings and continuing education opportunities - generate value beyond calculation. If you'd like a copy of the brochure, Emory: Economic Impact in Atlanta, call university communications at 404-727-4616. Or check out the web at www.emory.edu/WELCOME/EconomicImpact. |
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hen the vessels that carry blood become diseased, the effects can be devastating. Heart attacks, strokes, dementia, and impotence are all results of vascular disease, which is responsible for more than half of all deaths in the United States.
A recent $4.5 million gift from the Marcus Foundation of Atlanta will help Emory's Center for Vascular Diseases find new ways to prevent and treat vascular system diseases. The funding, to be received over the next two years, will establish the Marcus Chair in Vascular Medicine and the Marcus Vascular Research Fund in the Emory School of Medicine. "The implications of successful discoveries in vascular health are significant and will touch all our lives," says Bernard Marcus (right), co-founder of Home Depot and founder of the Marcus Foundation. The gift will support innovative research in large artery disease, which increases the risk of clot formation and multiple small strokes, as well as peripheral vascular disease, which primarily affects the extremities. The center is currently working to advance knowledge of blood vessel biology, formation, regression, and disease development. New research initiatives will build on existing vascular research here, including the study of oxygen free radicals, which are produced inside blood vessel cells and stimulate mechanisms that attract inflammatory white cells, ultimately leading to artery disease and destruction. Other ongoing studies seek to control cancer by reducing blood flow to cancer cells, depriving them of nutrition. Researchers are also working to develop new drugs to treat vascular disease and seeking ways to grow new blood vessels to treat obstructive arterial disease. |
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ith $6 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation over the next five years, the Rollins School of Public Health (RSPH) will seek to help eradicate lymphatic filariasis (LF).
Also known as elephantiasis, LF is a painful and profoundly disfiguring disease caused by a parasitic worm that is transmitted by the bite of infected mosquitoes. More than 120 million people are infected, most in India, South Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas, and an additional 1.2 billion people are at risk of infection. The RSPH funding is part of a $20 million grant to support the Global Alliance for the Elimination of Lymphatic Filariasis, a coalition of public and private partners. In collaboration with the Carter Center and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Center for Lymphatic Filariasis in the RSPH's department of international health will conduct the studies in afflicted countries. Led by health economist Anne Haddix, the center provides support for economic research and fundraising efforts to partners in the Global Alliance. The debilitating effects of LF, a disease usually acquired during childhood, have major social and economic impacts. LF is a significant cause of poverty in over 80 countries. Globally, the infection has been recognized as one of the leading causes of permanent and long-term disability, resulting not only in physical suffering but also in serious psychosocial problems. Scientific advances within the past decade, however, have made the elimination of LF feasible, especially with the aid of large-scale drug donations from SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKine) and Merck. With the Gates grant, the alliance will create new national elimination programs modeled after those already underway in 33 of the 80 countries affected and aimed at reaching all at-risk populations. Elimination activities will include mass distribution of drugs, fortified salt, health education, alleviation of suffering, training, and operations research in endemic countries. |
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ntipsychotic drugs are used widely for schizophrenia and dementia, but their overall effectiveness remains unclear. Emory is the only site in Georgia selected to participate in a $42.1 million multicenter study evaluating the clinical effectiveness of five antipsychotic drugs for treatment of patients with schizophrenia or psychotic and disruptive behaviors associated with Alzheimer's disease.
The Clinical Antipsychotic Trials of Intervention Effectiveness is part of a research initiative by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to address the delivery of public mental health care and the clinical management of patients. The project will focus on the conditions for which atypical antipsychotic drugs are used as treatment. The goal is to establish an evidence-based protocol that is expected to make a fundamental difference in how mental health professionals treat patients with serious mental illnesses. This is the largest single federal grant ever awarded by the NIMH, say co-principal investigators Charles Nemeroff and Joseph Bona, chair and vice chair, respectively, of the medical school's department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. "This trial will likely redefine the way clinicians manage patients with schizophrenia," adds Bona. Conventional antipsychotic drugs, such as chlorpromazine and haloperidol, have a proven track record in the treatment of schizophrenia. However, their use is limited. This protocol will study the efficacy, limitations, and clinical appropriateness of conventional versus newer atypical medications. |
  Illustration by Ande Cook |
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The study will run through September 2004 and will recruit about 1,800 patients nationally, 20 of whom will be treated at Emory. The project will be led by the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. |
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