RESUMEN
The 1998 Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine has been awarded jointly to North-American scientists, Dr Robert F. Furchgott, Louis J. Ignarro and Ferid Murad, for their discoveries in relation to "nitric oxide as a signalling molecule in the cardiovascular system". This has raised an important polemic because of the exclusion the South-American scientist, now nationalized British, Dr. Salvador Moncada. This short historical review examines some of the fundamental contributions to the knowledge in this field. It shows the sequence of the discoveries and the communication of them to the scientific community by the rewarded scientists and by Dr. Moncada. It is based on some fundamental publications in order to better understand this story, which does not coincide with the writing in 1996 by the Lasker Prize Committee, and which in 1998 was re-written again by the Nobel Committee of the Swedish Academy. More than 90 universities, academies and societies have acknowledged Dr. Moncada up to now with priority in the discovery of the fact that nitric oxide is released by endothelial cells, and the revealing of its metabolic way. More than 20,000 citations of their fundamental papers endorse in the scientific community his primacy in this field. Even Robert Furchgott, author of the brilliant discovery of the endothelium derived relaxing factor, that opened this field to the science, declared about the award of the 1998 Nobel Prize: "I feel that the Nobel Prize Committee could have made an exception this year and chosen a fourth person, Salvador Moncada (to share the prize)".
Asunto(s)
Óxido Nítrico/historia , Premio Nobel , Animales , Historia del Siglo XX , Humanos , Investigación/historiaRESUMEN
The concept of shock and its close relationship with that of stress dates back to the experiments of Hans Selye initiated in 1936 at McGill University in Montreal, with whom I collaborated between 1939 and 1942. It was demonstrated that the General Adaptation Syndrome begins with an Alarm Reaction, which consists of a Stage of Shock and one of Counter-Shock, followed by a Stage of Adaptation and finally a Stage of Exhaustion. My Ph.D. thesis concluded that shock was due to an adrenal insufficiency postulating that active metabolic processes drain the body of certain essential compounds the lack of which causes shock. My interest in the role of the glucose metabolism in shock led me to work with Bernardo Houssay in 1942 at the Institute of Physiology of the University of Buenos Aires and in 1944 with C.N.H. Long at Yale University. There I developed a method for the induction of hemorrhagic shock in the guinea pig with 94% lethality; curiously, the administration of 200 mg of ascorbic acid prevented death. Upon my return to Buenos Aires, these results were confirmed and moreover, it was demonstrated that the administration of cortisone led to 40% survival of the animals while desoxycorticosterone had no effect. At the time, no explanation was available but to-day, half a century later, this Symposium should be able to explain the mechanisms leading to death by hemorrhagic shock.