Clinical Center

Helping the Heart Stand Up to Sepsis

NIH Researcher Explores Why Some Survive Infection-Induced Organ Damage

human body with heart highlighted surrounded by bacteria

“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” That line from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes can be applied to mysteries of all sorts, including the ones scientists toil away in their labs to solve. When it comes to solving the many mysteries of sepsis — a life-threatening immune over-reaction to an uncontrolled infection — the process of elimination is leading us closer to answers, thanks to researchers at the NIH Clinical Center.

Sepsis — also known as septic shock in its most severe form — occurs when the body’s immune system kicks into overdrive to fight a severe infection. Unfortunately, rather than just attacking the harmful invaders, the immune system releases chemicals that, when present in excess, cause intense, tissue-damaging inflammation and impair organ function. In recognition of Sepsis Survivors Week, we spoke with IRP Senior Investigator Charles Natanson, M.D., about two of the great mysteries of sepsis: how does sepsis cause organ failure in the first place, and why do some people survive it while so many others die?

Mislabeled Proteins Linked to Birth Defects

IRP Researchers Discover Genetic Disorder Affecting the Brain and Skull

baby

A baby is born with a birth defect every four and a half minutes in the United States, adding up to one in every 33 babies born each year in this country. While some birth defects can be corrected or treated, many result in life-altering disabilities, and sometimes the child doesn’t survive. In fact, birth defects account for about 20 percent of infant deaths in the U.S. World Birth Defects Day, celebrated on March 3 each year, honors the people and organizations who are working to understand, prevent, and treat birth defects.

One of these organizations is the Undiagnosed Diseases Program (UDP) at NIH, which connects experts across the IRP’s 23 Institutes and Centers in a joint effort to find explanations for the “most puzzling medical cases" referred to the NIH Clinical Center.

Looking Back at a Pandemic Year

Photos Document NIH Response to COVID-19

walk-up COVID-19 testing stations at the at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences campus in North Carolina

This past January marked the one-year anniversary of NIH’s role in addressing COVID-19. For many, it has been a year of hardships and grief, but the race to subdue this new virus has also tapped into the resolve and ingenuity of IRP staff who have already helped create diagnostic tests, vaccines, and therapeutics. Let's take a look back to see a few examples of how IRP scientists and staff have contributed to the fight against COVID-19, as well as how the pandemic has changed life at the NIH.

An Ebola Therapy Two Decades in the Making

IRP Researcher Nancy Sullivan Led Development of Cutting-Edge Treatment

a volunteer receives an infusion of an experimental Ebola therapy during a phase I clinical trial

Twenty-four years before the novel coronavirus began spreading in Wuhan, China, an outbreak of another deadly virus burned through the city of Kikwit in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo. Between January and August of 1995, 316 people are thought to have contracted Ebola, and 252 of them died. More than a decade later, a team of NIH infectious disease scientists would track down one of the survivors and use a sample of the individual’s blood to produce one of the first effective treatments for Ebola.

IRP’s Harvey Alter Awarded Nobel Prize

NIH Researcher’s Pioneering Work Led to Discovery of Hepatitis C

Dr. Harvey Alter

When the phone rang at 4:15 in the morning, IRP senior scientist Harvey J. Alter, M.D., was annoyed. He didn’t answer it. After the third try, he reluctantly got out of bed and took his phone out to the hallway.

“Before I could yell at the person, he said, ‘This is Stockholm calling,’” Dr. Alter recalls. “And then I got stopped in my tracks. Then the moment of disbelief and awe comes over you.”

The man from Stockholm informed Dr. Alter that he had won the 2020 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his contributions to the discovery of the hepatitis C virus. He shared the prize with Michael Houghton, Ph.D., of the University of Alberta, Canada, and Charles M. Rice, Ph.D., of Rockefeller University in New York.

Let's Have Some Fun with NIH History

I've spent the last couple months scouring the NIH archives for the most interesting trivia tidbits I could find. Now you can entertain your colleagues and friends with these 10 fun facts about NIH!

1) Native Americans camped along the stream on the east side of campus beginning about 3,000 years ago. They left choppers, arrow heads, and other material evidence behind.

Native American stone artifact (left) and the stream on the NIH main campus where it was found (right)

Remembering Dr. Alan Rabson, a Leader in Cancer Care

Dr. Alan Rabson with journalist and author Katie Couric

The NIH community and cancer scientists around the world were saddened to learn that Alan Rabson, M.D., a prominent former IRP researcher and Deputy Director of the NIH’s National Cancer Institute (NCI), passed away on July 4 at the age of 92.

Dr. Rabson first joined the NIH in 1955 as a pathologic anatomy resident in the NIH Clinical Center, which had opened just two years before, and he began studying cancer-causing viruses in an NCI intramural laboratory a year later. Over the course of his ensuing six decades with NIH, Dr. Rabson accumulated a great many stories, a few of which we have shared in his own words, pulled from a 1997 “NCI Oral History Project” interview.

Remembrances: James Holland (1925-2018)

Dr. James Holland

James F. Holland, M.D., a renowned cancer expert who was a major figure in the development of cancer chemotherapy, died on March 22, 2018, at the age of 92. Dr. Holland was among the first group of research physicians recruited to the NIH Clinical Center, serving as a senior surgeon at the National Cancer Institute from 1953 to 1954. In that short year at the NIH, he initiated a clinical trial to compare continuous or intermittent treatment with two chemotherapy agents for acute leukemia in children: methotrexate and 6-mercaptopurine. Dr. Holland moved to Roswell Park Memorial Institute in Buffalo before the trial was completed, but he continued to collaborate. His work ultimately turned an incurable illness into one with an 80% survival rate. In 1972, he and his NIH collaborators shared the Albert Lasker Clinical Medical Research Award for "outstanding contribution to the concept and application of combination therapy in the treatment of acute leukemia in children."

New in NIH History

We haven’t shared recent additions to the NIH Stetten Museum collection in a long time, so you’re in for a treat this month!

balance and Gene Hughes

Guest Blog – Aaron Ramsay

Reblog via The Children’s Inn at NIH: Family Stories.

Photo of Aaron smiling on a boat

When I first came to The Children’s Inn in June of 2016, I had no idea what it would mean to me. The next several months, though, certainly ended up being some of the most transformational months of my life. I first came to The Inn as a 19-year-old who had somehow managed to finish his first year of college, even while dealing with a harsh genetic disease known as sickle cell anemia. After staying at The Inn for nearly five months, I left as a man, entering his second year of college, having been healed from the disease that once shaped his life.