When Francois Abboud began his work at the University of Iowa in 1960, little was known about the constant physiological chatter between the brain and the blood vessels.
His research since has helped unravel how this chatter adjusts blood pressure and blood flow to meet the body's constantly changing demands.
The work has already led to clinical advances, and more may be on the way: Dr. Abboud defined the identity of a sensor in the nerve endings in the carotid artery in the neck that rapidly lowers blood pressure when stimulated. A clinical trial is now underway to see if people who are hypertensive can lower their blood pressure by using a pacemaker-like device that stimulates the nerve endings in the blood vessels.
Ann M. Schreihofer focuses on the role the brain plays in increasing sympathetic nervous activity, which contributes to many forms of hypertension (high blood pressure). Her Medical College of Georgia laboratory studies the links between conditions such as obesity and the chronic intermittent hypoxia that happens in sleep apnea and chronic activation of the sympathetic nervous system.
"We're studying why people who are obese become hypertensive," Dr. Schreihofer said of one aspect of her work. "We believe this is due to something about the obese state: We don't know what that is, but we're starting to rule things out." Indeed, the Schreihofer laboratory has already answered one question: Does hypertension occur because the brain loses its ability to sense that the blood vessels are stretching under high pressure? In a study with obese rats, they found the rats' brains could sense the stretch but still became hypertensive, eliminating that mechanism as a possibility.
APS recognizes important research
The American Physiological Society (APS) presented its highest award, the Walter B. Cannon Award, to Dr. Abboud. He is the 27th recipient of the Cannon Award, which goes to an outstanding scientist, and delivered the Walter B. Cannon Physiology in Perspective lecture on April 18. The lecture is part of the 122nd annual meeting of the APS, which is part of Experimental Biology 2009.
The Society has awarded Dr. Schreihofer the Henry Pickering Bowditch Memorial Award for early-career achievement. She is the 53rd recipient of the award, which goes to a scientist younger than 42 years whose accomplishments are both original and outstanding. It is the Society's second-highest award. Dr. Schreihofer presented the Bowditch lecture on April 19, at the APS session of Experimental Biology 2009.
Distinguished careers
Dr. Abboud is the Edith King Pearson Chair in Cardiovascular Research and director of the Cardiovascular Research Center at the Carver College of Medicine at the University of Iowa. He is a past-president of the American Heart Association, a former editor of Physiology in Medicine (Annals of Internal Medicine) and past president of the Association of American Physicians. He is a member of the National Academies of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Schreihofer has won three previous awards from The American Physiological Society. She established her own laboratory at the Medical College of Georgia in 2001. Still at the beginning of her career, she has already co-authored more than 35 studies in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Physiology, Journal of Neuroscience and the American Journal of Physiology.
Dr. Abboud has helped discover how the brain uses hormones to orchestrate blood flow to different parts of the body. This helped explain how the brain sends blood to the gastrointestinal tract after eating, but redirects it to the heart and muscles if we start running, for example.