Health
J. Robin Warren, Who Proved That Bacteria Cause Ulcers, Dies at 87
Dr. J. Robin Warren, an Australian pathologist who shared a Nobel Prize for discovering that most stomach ulcers were caused by the bacterium Helicobacter pylori — and not, as had been widely believed, stress, alcohol or spicy foods — died on July 23 in Inglewood, Australia. He was 87.
His death, at a care home, was announced by the University of Western Australia in Perth, where he was an emeritus professor for many years. His daughter-in-law Gigi Warren said the cause was complications after a recent fall.
In 1984, Dr. Warren and his collaborator, the gastroenterologist Barry Marshall, published a paper in the British medical journal The Lancet describing their finding that the spiral-shaped bacterium now commonly called H. pylori festered in the stomachs of patients with ulcers and gastritis. Dr. Warren had first noticed the bacterium on a gastric biopsy sample in 1979.
The paper’s conclusion upended centuries of conventional wisdom about the cause of ulcers. (Psychoanalysts had even written of the “peptic ulcer personality.”) Doctors typically prescribed stress reduction, a bland diet and, starting in 1977, drugs like Tagamet and Zantac to tame the burning acids. Severe cases were sometimes treated with surgery.
When the study was published, gastroenterologists were skeptical. They expressed concern about whether to trust potentially paradigm-shifting findings made by two unknown researchers in Australia. And the idea that bacteria could even grow in the stomach was considered blasphemy.
“For about 100 years, or 1,000 years, the standard teaching in medicine was that the stomach was sterile and nothing grew there because of corrosive gastric juices,” Dr. Warren told The New York Times in 2005 after he and Dr. Marshall won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. “So everybody believed there were no bacteria in the stomach. When I said they were there, no one believed it.”
The study was also at odds with the marketing done by pharmaceutical companies, which had spent millions of dollars developing acid reduction drugs. Those medicines cleared up ulcers, but the condition often returned again and again. Dr. Warren and Dr. Marshall’s work suggested that antibiotics would be a more effective treatment.
“The prospect that antibiotics might cure ulcers was a serious threat to the world record profitability of the recently developed wonder drugs that stopped the secretion of gastric acid and healed ulcers rapidly,” Dr. William S. Hughes wrote in “The Great Ulcer War” (2014), a history of the Australian duo’s fight over proving that H. pylori caused ulcers.
Fed up with the skepticism and pushback after their paper was published, Dr. Marshall had a rather unconventional idea: infecting themselves with H. pylori.
“I didn’t like that idea at all,” Dr. Warren later said, “so I think I just said no.”
But Dr. Marshall went through with it, gulping down a broth of the bacterium. A few days later, he became severely ill with gastritis — the precursor to an ulcer.
That still wasn’t enough proof. It would take almost a decade for physicians to finally accept the findings and change how they treated ulcers: with antibiotics, just as they would treat any other bacterial infection.
“Now there is the possibility of curing the condition, which was unthought of before,” Hugo Gallo-Torres, a Food and Drug Administration official, said in 1994, adding, “We had treated ulcers with anti-secretory compounds for so many years, it was hard to accept that a germ, a bacterium, would produce a disease like that.”
John Robin Warren was born on June 11, 1937, in North Adelaide, Australia. His father, Roger, studied viticulture and was a winemaker. His mother, Helen (Verco) Warren, was a nurse who had dreams of becoming a doctor but couldn’t afford medical school.
He studied medicine at the University of Adelaide, graduating in 1961. He wanted to specialize in psychiatry, but he wasn’t accepted into the residency program. He chose clinical pathology instead, committing himself to a solitary life staring into a microscope.
“In practice, ‘Clinical Pathology’ meant mainly laboratory hematology, which I thoroughly enjoyed,” Dr. Warren wrote in his Nobel autobiography. “Although the usual work entailed reporting on blood smears and bone marrow, we had a wide range of other tasks, including examining feces for parasites, examining urine and testing skin and nails for fungus.”
In 1968, he became a pathologist at Royal Perth Hospital, which is affiliated with the University of Western Australia.
“He was a bit eccentric,” Dr. Marshall said in an interview. “You’re a pathologist living down in the basement there, cutting up dead bodies and that. So you didn’t have to be a people person really to succeed at that job.”
What Dr. Warren did have was a kind of scholarly stubbornness.
“He’s uninfluenced by other people’s opinions,” Dr. Marshall said, adding that even when colleagues laughed at their attempts to prove H. pylori caused ulcers, “as far as he’s concerned, that was the facts. And if you didn’t believe it, it’s because you were just incompetent or something.”
Dr. Warren married Winifred Williams, a psychiatrist, in 1962. She died in 1997. They had five children. (Complete information on survivors was not immediately available.)
At the outset of Dr. Warren’s obsession with H. pylori, his wife was among the few people in his life not to deem him crazy — though she was certainly qualified to do so.
“Before I met Barry, Win was the only person to accept my work and encourage me,” he wrote in his Nobel autobiography. “As a psychiatrist, she could have suggested I was mad. But she stood beside me and helped me when no one else would.”
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The latest COVID-19 vaccine (2024-2025) has been linked to fewer serious heart-related events among U.S. veterans.
New research confirmed a small reduction in COVID-related cardiovascular events, or COVID-19-associated MACE, due to the vaccine.
MACE (major adverse cardiovascular events) is a composite measure of serious heart-related outcomes. It typically includes cardiovascular death, heart attack and stroke, and may also include hospitalization for heart failure.
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Using health records from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the researchers compared two groups of veterans — one that received the COVID and flu vaccine on the same day (nearly 350,000 people) and another group that received only the flu vaccine (nearly 700,000 people).
For people older than 75, vaccine effectiveness against COVID-associated MACE was 50.7%. (iStock)
Out of more than one million veterans studied, the average age was about 70 and 92% were male, according to a press release.
Within about eight months, the results showed that those who received the 2024-2025 COVID vaccine had a lower risk of COVID-associated major cardiovascular events, with a relative vaccine effectiveness of 37.7%.
The COVID vaccine was linked to a 57.9% lower risk of cardiovascular death, 38.5% lower risk of heart attack and 41.9% lower risk of hospitalization for heart failure, the researchers stated. The result for stroke was not statistically significant.
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The benefit was greatest among adults ages 75 and older and those with underlying health conditions. In people over 75, the vaccine was 50.7% effective at preventing COVID-associated MACE.
As the study was observational, it could not prove cause and effect between the COVID-19 vaccine and lower risk of cardiovascular events, but only highlighted an association.
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Dr. Glenn Hirsch, cardiologist at National Jewish Health in Denver, Colorado, called these results “not overall surprising” in an interview with Fox News Digital.
After eight months, those who received the 2024-2025 COVID vaccine had a lower risk of COVID-associated major cardiovascular events. (iStock)
“This result is consistent with previous studies of the COVID-19 vaccine and other vaccines against infectious diseases [in] preventing cardiovascular events, including heart attack, cardiovascular cause of death or hospitalizations,” he said.
Acute inflammation in the body from infections like COVID-19 increases the risk of cardiovascular events and can cause further complications, according to the doctor.
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“This can lead to a higher risk of blood clotting, but can also make arterial plaques susceptible to rupture, which then leads to clot formation to heal a ruptured plaque,” he said. “This clotting can cause a near-total or complete occlusion of an artery, leading to these cardiovascular events.”
“Vaccines either prevent infection or reduce the severity of infection and subsequent inflammation, lowering the cardiovascular risk.”
Acute inflammation in the body from infections like COVID-19 can increase the risk of cardiovascular events, the study suggests. (iStock)
Despite the positive outcome, the overall benefit of the vaccine in this study was less than in previous studies, according to Hirsch, who was not involved in the research.
This could be due to the lower severity of illness seen in more recent COVID-19 variants, as well as immunity from prior infections among unvaccinated people, he noted. There has also been a decline in COVID testing, making it more difficult to link cardiovascular events to the virus.
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“The bottom line [is] that there is still evidence of benefit from COVID-19 vaccination like many other infectious disease vaccinations, and people should be encouraged to discuss these with their healthcare team annually,” Hirsch advised.
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“This is an observational trial and there can always be some confounding after necessary statistical adjustments and other potential benefits or harms, including adverse effects from vaccines that were not investigated in this study,” he added.
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A former “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star is speaking out about a fresh wave of health issues.
Brandi Glanville, 53, has been speaking publicly about ongoing swelling, lumps and paralysis of her face since 2023.
At the time, the reality star shared that she believed she had been infected with a parasite during a trip to Morocco, Fox News Digital previously reported.
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After the initial diagnosis, she suspected she contracted a parasite in Morocco and said she could feel it moving within her face.
Brandi Glanville attends the grand opening of Beverly Hills Rejuvenation Clinic West Hollywood in West Hollywood, Calif., on April 25, 2024. (Paul Archuleta/Getty Images)
Glanville was first diagnosed with stress-induced angioedema, a sudden swelling of the deeper layers of the skin and mucous membranes, according to Cleveland Clinic.
Angioedema “is a reaction similar to hives that affects deeper layers of the skin. It can appear with hives or alone,” Mayo Clinic states.
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Most recently, in a June 18 episode of her podcast “Brandi Glanville Unfiltered,” Glanville revealed that doctors discovered a “benign tumor” in one of her facial lymph nodes.
The reality star, who has previously speculated that a parasite may be contributing to her facial symptoms, said the finding could help explain the swelling and fluid buildup she has experienced and noted that she has had a lump in her face for “years.”
Brandi Glanville, 53, has been speaking publicly about ongoing swelling, lumps and paralysis of her face since 2023. (Mega/GC Images)
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, guys. I thought I was fixed, and then it happened again and now it’s sinking in again,” Glanville said in another June podcast.
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“It could be why the fluid is going around my face and why I’m having a hard time,” she added.
While benign tumors of the face have been known to arise from fat tissue, blood vessels, skin structures, salivary glands or lymphatic tissue, Glanville has not publicly disclosed the specific type of diagnosis she received.
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Prior to learning of the tumor, Glanville said she saw dozens of doctors and spent over $100,000 trying to pinpoint the source of the issue.
Brandi Glanville shares images of painful facial burns caused by Nair hair removal cream in a viral TikTok video. (Brandi Glanville/TikTok)
The reality star emphasized that the tumor is “not cancerous.”
“I haven’t had a face lift yet!” she added.
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Glanville also said she suspected her ruptured breast implants could have played a role in her health issues, claiming the leaking silicone had clogged her lymph nodes.
Fox News Digital reached out to Glanville for comment.
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