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UNC physician wins prestigious clinical research award
CHAPEL HILL, N.C.- A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physician has been selected to receive a $35,000 award for excellence in clinical research from the American Gastroenterological Association.
May 2, 2005
UNC physician wins prestigious clinical research award
CHAPEL HILL, N.C. – A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill physician has been selected to receive a $35,000 award for excellence in clinical research from the American Gastroenterological Association.
Dr. Douglas A. Drossman will be given the 2005 AGA/Miles and Shirley Fiterman Foundation Joseph B. Kirsner Award in Clinical Research in Gastroenterology in Chicago during the international Digestive Disease Week conference, May 15-18. The award includes $35,000 in financial support, which will be sent to UNC to further Drossman’s research.
“The functional GI disorders have only recently become recognized as an area for modern scientific investigation,” Drossman said. “I am proud to receive this award personally and as a representative of the AGA’s acknowledgment to this important field of research. I am also pleased to represent UNC.”
Drossman is a professor of medicine and psychiatry in the UNC School of Medicine and co-director of the UNC Center for Functional and Motility Disorders. He was nominated for the award by Dr. Robert S. Sandler, Nina C. and John T. Sessions distinguished professor and chief of UNC’s division of gastroenterology and hepatology. Sandler received the award last year.
“I can state without contradiction that he is the most prominent and most influential clinical researcher in the field of functional bowel disease,” Sandler said. “In fact, his work over the past two decades has largely defined the field.”
Drossman is known for several significant contributions to research in functional gastrointestinal disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome. For example, years ago the field had no standard biologic or physiologic measures that could be used to define functional disorders. So, Drossman convened a group of experts who developed what are now known as the “Rome criteria.”
These criteria were the first to provide research quality definitions for the range of gastro-intestinal functional disorders and have since become the standard in functional disease research. They have been as important to the functional disorders field as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders has been in psychiatry, Sandler said.
Another area in which Drossman’s research has been influential is in recognizing the importance of physical and sexual abuse in irritable bowel syndrome outcomes. Research led by Drossman and funded by the National Institutes of Health showed that more severe abuse was associated with more severe outcomes.
Drossman is also known for developing several research instruments that are widely used in his field. These include the Irritable Bowel Syndrome-Quality of Life measure or IBS-QOL, which is used to assess the impact of irritable bowel syndrome in individual patients and its treatment and has been translated into 18 languages; the Rating Form of IBD Concerns or RFIPC, one of the earlier condition-specific instruments for inflammatory bowel disease; the Abuse Severity Scale, which is currently the only measure of abuse severity in the field; and the Functional Bowel Disorder Severity Index or FBDSI, one of only two severity measures used in irritable bowel syndrome research.
More recently Drossman’s research has focused on what has been called the “mind-body link” between psychological stress and functional disorders such as irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. He is currently using brain imaging to examine possible links between psychosocial stress and pain in irritable bowel syndrome. He is also helping to validate and legitimize behavioral and drug treatment in functional gastrointestinal disorders and is developing new investigators in the field of biopsychosocial research.
“Doug Drossman has almost single-handedly shaped an entire field of research,” Sandler said. “By doing so he has placed the field of functional disease research on a solid scientific foundation. As a consequence the lives of countless patients have been improved.”
The UNC Health Care System is a not-for-profit integrated health care system owned by the state of North Carolina and based in Chapel Hill. It exists to further the teaching mission of the University of North Carolina and to provide state-of-the-art patient care. UNC Health Care is comprised of UNC Hospitals, ranked consistently among the best medical centers in the country; the UNC School of Medicine, a nationally eminent research institution; community practices; home health and hospice services in seven central North Carolina counties; and Rex Healthcare and its provider network in Wake County.
Photo link: http://www.unchealthcare.org/site/images/drossmandouglas.jpg
Media contact: Stephanie Crayton, (919) 966-2860, scrayton@unch.unc.edu
