Grayston to present Public Health’s first Distinguished Faculty Lecture

The School of Public Health and Community Medicine will present its first Distinguished Faculty Lecture next week, featuring Dr. J. Thomas Grayston, professor of epidemiology and first dean of the school. Grayston was UW vice president for health sciences from 1971 until 1983.

Grayston

Grayston is internationally known for identifying a form of chlamydia bacteria that causes acute respiratory disease, Chlamydia pneumoniae, and then for linking that organism with atherosclerosis, sometimes called hardening of the arteries. While research over the last decade has confirmed the link between the bacteria and the disease, it isn’t clear that the bacteria is actually causing the atherosclerosis.

Grayston now heads a large, national clinical trial to administer antibiotics (or a placebo) to people who have proven coronary heart disease. More than 4,000 subjects have been recruited. After a year of antibiotic or placebo therapy, the subjects will be observed for three more years for heart attacks or coronary heart episodes.

In addition, work with animal models goes on in several laboratories, including that of UW professors Dr. Lee Ann Campbell and Dr. C. C. Kuo. The animal studies, Grayston says, support a causal role for the organism in the pathogenesis of atherosclerotic diseases.

He noted that this is now an area of very active research, with 124 published papers in 1999 on the role of Chlamydia pneumoniae in cardiovascular disease and an entire supplemental issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases in June 2000. At a recent European chlamydia group meeting in Helsinki, 15 papers were presented on the subject and Grayston made one of three major presentations.

Grayston will speak on “Chlamydia Pneumonia: From Respiratory Infection to Cardiovascular Disease” at 3:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 12, in room T-739 of the Health Sciences Center. A reception will follow in T-469, HSC.