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Robert Ader, Ph.D., a founder of the field of study that investigates links between the mind and the body’s immune system and a professor emeritus of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center, died Dec. 20 at the Highlands at Pittsford. He was 79.
Dr. Ader coined the word psychoneuroimmunology to describe the field of study he helped create. He launched the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity and was a Medical Center faculty member for 50 years.
He was the founder and past president of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society, and also past president of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research and the American Psychosomatic Society.
His theories that the human mind could significantly affect the ability of the immune system to fight disease initially were greeted with heated skepticism and sometimes scorn when he first proposed them more than 30 years ago, but now they are applied and studied in many medical specialties, not only psychiatry, by researchers around the world.
“Bob Ader and his colleagues transformed the way that we think about the relationship between life events and our environment, and how our bodies respond biologically,” said Eric Caine, M.D., chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “His work has extraordinary implications, not only for understanding immunological responses to stress and disease, but also for appreciating the potentially powerful positive effects of what so many call the ‘placebo effect.’ ’’
In 2009 in his most recent paper in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, he and his fellow Medical Center researchers described using the placebo effect to successfully treat psoriasis patients with a quarter to a half of the usual dose of a widely used steroid medication. Early results in human patients suggest that this new technique could improve treatment for several chronic diseases that involve mental state or the immune system.
“Our study provides evidence that the placebo effect can make possible the treatment of psoriasis with an amount of drug that should be too small to work,” Dr. Ader said then. “While these results are preliminary, we believe the medical establishment needs to recognize the mind’s reaction to medication as a powerful part of many drug effects, and start taking advantage of it,”
Source: urmc.rochester.edu
Dr. Ader coined the word psychoneuroimmunology to describe the field of study he helped create. He launched the journal Brain, Behavior and Immunity and was a Medical Center faculty member for 50 years.
He was the founder and past president of the Psychoneuroimmunology Research Society, and also past president of the Academy of Behavioral Medicine Research and the American Psychosomatic Society.
His theories that the human mind could significantly affect the ability of the immune system to fight disease initially were greeted with heated skepticism and sometimes scorn when he first proposed them more than 30 years ago, but now they are applied and studied in many medical specialties, not only psychiatry, by researchers around the world.
“Bob Ader and his colleagues transformed the way that we think about the relationship between life events and our environment, and how our bodies respond biologically,” said Eric Caine, M.D., chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Rochester Medical Center. “His work has extraordinary implications, not only for understanding immunological responses to stress and disease, but also for appreciating the potentially powerful positive effects of what so many call the ‘placebo effect.’ ’’
In 2009 in his most recent paper in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, he and his fellow Medical Center researchers described using the placebo effect to successfully treat psoriasis patients with a quarter to a half of the usual dose of a widely used steroid medication. Early results in human patients suggest that this new technique could improve treatment for several chronic diseases that involve mental state or the immune system.
“Our study provides evidence that the placebo effect can make possible the treatment of psoriasis with an amount of drug that should be too small to work,” Dr. Ader said then. “While these results are preliminary, we believe the medical establishment needs to recognize the mind’s reaction to medication as a powerful part of many drug effects, and start taking advantage of it,”
Source: urmc.rochester.edu