Research celebrates extensive influence

Anatoliy Gashev, MD, PhD, DMSci, associate professor in the Department of Medical Physiology at the Texas A&M College of Medicine, recently won the Wiederhielm Award from the Journal of Microcirculation. This award recognizes the senior author of the most highly cited original manuscript in the journal over the previous 5-year period.

Gashev’s research paper focused on the novel role of histamine—the compound known to be involved in allergic reactions—in the lymphatic system. It had been known that nitric oxide plays an important role in the normal relaxation of lymphatic vessels induced by increases in lymph flow, but it hadn’t been understood that histamine affects this process as well. This study found that only by blocking both nitric oxide and histamine could the contraction of the lymphatic vessels be unaffected by the flow of the lymph fluid. Such findings might have important implications for disorders of aging, as older individuals tend to have increased histamine activity and decreased nitric oxide. An excess of aging or disease-produced histamine can cause abnormal alterations of the lymphatic phasic contractions and tone.

Although many of the researchers citing the paper are in fields directly related to physiology, some are in disciplines as diverse as biomedical engineering, radiation oncology, orthopedic surgery and veterinary biosciences. These researchers include faculty from Harvard Medical School and Yale School of Medicine, in addition to those around the world in Helsinki, Finland; Barcelona, Spain; London, United Kingdom; Ahwaz, Iran; and Isehara, Kanagawa, Japan.

The award, established in 1995, is in memory of Curt A. Wiederhielm, an early contributor to The Microcirculatory Society, which publishes the Journal of Microcirculation. Wiederhielm developed new quantitative approaches in the field, including a new way to record blood pressure in tiny vessels.

“We are proud of this award because it is clear evidence of unbiased recognition of our work by actively publishing leaders in our field of lymphatic physiology and beyond,” Gashev said.