Astute Clinician Lecture on Insulin Resistance, October 26, 2004 NIH Record

Astute Clinician Lecture on Insulin Resistance

Dr. Gerald M. Reaven will deliver the Astute Clinician Lecture, on "Insulin Resistance and Metabolic Syndromes: Different Names, Different Concepts, Different Goals," on Wednesday, Nov. 3 at 3 p.m. in Masur Auditorium, Bldg. 10.

Reaven, professor of medicine in Stanford University School of Medicine's division of cardiovascular medicine, has been on Stanford's faculty for more than 40 years. His research has advanced the understanding of diabetes and related disorders, including insulin resistance.

Dr. Gerald M. Reaven

Insulin resistance is marked by high levels of insulin in the blood. Although this tends to keep blood sugar levels down, it can eventually lead to diabetes II because the pancreas becomes overtaxed and cannot continue to produce such high insulin levels. It also leads to other medical conditions, including heart disease.

Abnormalities associated with insulin resistance were first recognized in the late 1980s. Since then much new information has come forth about insulin resistance and disease, leading to two approaches in thinking about the condition. One has been to recognize that the abnormalities associated with insulin resistance have broadened and to change the way physicians view the clinical syndromes associated with the condition. The second approach is to establish criteria to diagnose this metabolic syndrome as a way to identify those at risk for developing heart disease. The lecture will explore the implications of both approaches.

Reaven earned his M.D. and completed his internship at the University of Chicago. After a residency in internal medicine at the University of Michigan, in 1959 he went to Stanford, where he has been since. He has served as instructor (1960), associate professor (1965), professor (1970), head of the division of endocrinology and metabolic diseases (1974-1977), head of the division of gerontology (1977-1990) and director of Stanford's General Clinical Research Center, which he established (1977-1990). Professor emeritus since 1995, he remains active in teaching and research.

Reaven has published more than 500 articles in scientific journals and numerous textbook chapters and other scholarly works. He has received the highest awards for research from the American Diabetes Association, the British Diabetes Association and the European Association for the Study of Diabetes. He also received the Novartis Award for Longstanding Achievement in Diabetes (2000), the sixth Linus Pauling Functional Medicine Award (2001) and the Renold Medal of the American Diabetes Association (2002), among many others.

The Astute Clinician Lecture was established through a gift from Haruko and Dr. Robert W. Miller. It honors a U.S. scientist who has observed an unusual clinical occurrence, and by investigating it, has opened an important new avenue of research.

The lecture is part of the NIH Director's Wednesday Afternoon Lecture series. For information and reasonable accommodation, contact Hilda Madine, (301) 594-5595.

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