Anesthesiology Research Laboratory
 |  |
| Mark P. Yeager, M.D. Director William Leroy Garth Professor of Anesthesiology | Joyce A. DeLeo, Ph.D. Assistant Director Professor of Anesthesiology and Pharmacology Irene Heinz Given Chair of Pharmacology Director of the Neuroscience Center at Dartmouth |
The Anesthesia Research Laboratory maintains a highly productive basic science and clinical research enterprise. Our research is focused on acute and chronic pain, and on glucocorticoid control of systemic inflammatory responses. In these arenas, we study both fundamental mechanisms and clinical therapeutics. The quality and importance of this research are underscored by the many grant awards recently received by Joyce DeLeo, Ph.D from the National Institutes of Health and from private foundations, and by the presentation of the William L. Garth endowment to Mark Yeager, M.D. in recognition of his research accomplishments.
The basic science program is an integrated effort directed towards understanding interactions between pain, pain treatments, and the immune system. Current investigations of mechanisms that lead to chronic neuropathic pain have led to important insights into spinal responses to pain and to potential therapeutic interventions. These investigations focus on how cells in the spinal cord and cells of the immune system respond to chronic pain in vivo and on the use of novel treatments to modify cellular responses and treat painful neuropathic conditions. Among their many achievements, Dr. DeLeo and her colleagues have demonstrated that central neuroinflammation, as defined by increases in spinal cytokines and glial activation, plays a key role in generating and maintaining chronic pain after peripheral nerve or central nerve root injury. Dr. DeLeo’s research has important clinical implications for both prevention and treatment of chronic neuropathic pain including such widespread conditions as chronic lumbar radiculopathy.
The Research Laboratory also supports ongoing clinical studies based in the Department of Anesthesiology. These investigations form a unified effort directed towards understanding the physiologic impact of trauma and sepsis on patient outcomes with special reference to glucocorticoid control of systemic inflammatory responses. Drs. Yeager, Fillinger, and Rassias have recently completed studies to investigate glucocorticoid control of systemic inflammatory responses during and after cardiac surgery. These studies have added new and important data to this growing literature. Dr. Athos Rassias has recently published his results of a clinical study that tested the effect of transient systemic inflammation on cardiac, hormonal, and leukocyte functional responses. This study is part of an emerging field of study that uses mathematical models of non-linear dynamics to test for increased functional regularity in systemic diseases as a way to evaluate and potentially treat disease states, such as sepsis, that have remained resistant to standard therapies. This model is particularly applicable to patients who are cared for by the Critical Care Medicine specialists in the Department of Anesthesiology.
Also see the Dartmouth Medical Interface Lab.
