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Esther M. Sternberg, M.D.
Dr. Esther M. Sternberg received her M.D. degree and training in Rheumatology at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. She did postdoctoral training at Washington University, Barnes Hospital, St. Louis, Missouri, in the Division of Allergy and Immunology. She was subsequently a Howard Hughes Associate and Instructor in Medicine at Washington University and Barnes Hospital, before joining the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in 1986. Dr. Sternberg is currently Director of the Integrative Neural Immune Program at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a multi-institute intramural research program aimed at facilitating interdisciplinary research across the fields of neuroscience and immunology and related clinical disciplines. She also is Chief of the Section on Neuroendocrine Immunology and Behavior at the NIMH.
Dr. Sternberg is internationally recognized for her groundbreaking discoveries in the area of central nervous system-immune system interactions. This body of work has been recognized by the international scientific community as coming to the core of the interactions between the brain and the immune system. Her discoveries defining the role of the brain's stress response in susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis and other inflammatory diseases also has shed light on the underlying mechanisms for the connection between stress, depression, and autoimmune disease: the molecular basis of the so-called mind-body interaction. Dr. Sternberg has written numerous original scientific articles and textbook chapters on this subject, has written and edited several books in this area, and has been invited to author many reviews on the field in leading scientific journals, including Nature Medicine, Science, The Scientific American and the Journal of Clinical Investigation. She was an invited guest editor of a Perspectives Series in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, is on the editorial board of many scientific journals, and is a reviewer for numerous journals including the New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Sternberg is the author of a science-for-the-lay-public book titled The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions (W.H. Freeman & Co., May 2000). In recognition of her work, Dr. Sternberg has been awarded the Public Health Service's Superior Service Award; the Arthritis Foundation William R. Felts Award for Excellence in Rheumatology Research; and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Public Health Service Staff Recognition Award for Special Achievement. She has been elected to the American Society for Clinical Investigation and has been appointed to a Committee of the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine. Dr. Sternberg co-chaired an international conference on neural-immune interactions at the NIH in 1996 and co-directed a concurrent exhibition and video at the National Library of Medicine on "Emotions and Disease." She has been invited to chair and organize many symposia at the leading scientific societies in areas of research that the field overlaps, including the Society for Neuroscience, the American Association of Immunology, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Most recently, Dr. Sternberg co-chaired an NIH/John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation conference on the Science of Mind-Body Interactions, co-sponsored by more than 15 NIH Institutes, Centers, and Offices. These events have had an important galvanizing influence in establishing the new field of research exploring the role that brain-immune communications and the stress response play in susceptibility and resistance to disease.
Dr. Sternberg also is internationally recognized as a foremost authority on the clinical characteristics, pathogenesis, and etiology of the L-Tryptophan Eosinophilia Myalgia Syndrome (L-TRP-EMS), which swept the country in epidemic proportions in 1989 in persons taking the amino acid food supplement, L-tryptophan. She was the first person to describe this syndrome in relation to ingestion of a similar drug, L-5-hydroxytryptophan, and published this landmark article in the New England Journal of Medicine in 1980. Dr. Sternberg led the NIH response to this public health crisis and coordinated with other Health and Human Services Agencies involved in the research into the pathogenesis of the syndrome, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In recognition of her expertise in this area, Dr. Sternberg has acted as advisor to several U.S. and international organizations, including the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine, Pan American Health Organization, and the World Health Organization (WHO). She was awarded the FDA Commissioner's Special Citation for her outstanding contributions in the study of the etiology of EMS, has received the Public Health Service Superior Service Award in recognition of this work, and has testified on this and related issues as an expert witness before Congress. She has served as a Temporary Advisor to the WHO on issues of contamination of the world food supply, stemming from the L-tryptophan and toxic oil syndrome epidemics.
March 2002
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