The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1998
(CNN) — The Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine went this year to three U.S. scientists. Through collective research efforts, the trio discovered that the body uses nitric oxide — a colorless gas long believed to be just a common air pollutant — to regulate blood vessels. Their discovery helped pave the way for the wildly popular anti-impotence drug Viagra.
The $978,000 prize, awarded by Sweden’s Karolinska Institute, is to be divided equally among Robert Furchgott of the State University of New York in Brooklyn; Louis Ignarro of the University of California-Los Angeles; and Ferid Murad of the University of Texas Medical School in Houston.
Long known only as an air pollutant, nitric oxide and its related enzymes could one day provide the basis for the development of drugs that could treat everything from Alzheimer’s disease to high blood pressure. Its inhibition could play a role in treatment of sepsis and dangerous hypotension, and the ability to increase its activity might lead to a treatment for hypertension.
Nitric Oxide, more than any other single factor, maybe the key to living a longer healthier life.
1998 Nobel Prize – Dr. Ignarro
Nitric oxide (NO) is a gas that transmits signals in the organism. Signal transmission by a gas that is produced by one cell, penetrates through membranes and regulates the function of another cell represents an entirely new principle for signaling in biological systems.
Nitric oxide protects the heart, stimulates the brain, kills bacteria, etc.
Further research results rapidly confirmed that NO is a signal molecule of key importance for the cardiovascular system and it was also found to exert a series of other functions. We know today that NO acts as a signal molecule in the nervous system, as a weapon against infections, as a regulator of blood pressure and as a gatekeeper of blood flow to different organs. NO is present in most living creatures and made by many different types of cells.
- When NO is produced by the innermost cell layer of the arteries, the endothelium, it rapidly spreads through the cell membranes to the underlying muscle cells. Their contraction is turned off by NO, resulting in a dilatation of the arteries. In this way, NO controls the blood pressure and its distribution. It also prevents the formation of thrombi.
- When NO is formed in nerve cells, it spreads rapidly in all directions, activating all cells in the vicinity. This can modulate many functions, from behavior to gastrointestinal motility.
- When NO is produced in white blood cells (such as macrophages), huge quantities are achieved and become toxic to invading bacteria and parasites.
Importance in medicine today and tomorrow
Heart: In atherosclerosis, the endothelium has a reduced capacity to produce NO. However, NO can be furnished by treatment with nitroglycerin. Large efforts in drug discovery are currently aimed at generating more powerful and selective cardiac drugs based on the new knowledge of NO as a signal molecule.
Shock: Bacterial infections can lead to sepsis and circulatory shock. In this situation, NO plays a harmful role. White blood cells react to bacterial products by releasing enormous amounts of NO that dilate the blood vessels. The blood pressure drops and the patient may become unconscious. In this situation, inhibitors of NO synthesis may be useful in intensive care treatment.
Lungs: Intensive care patients can be treated by inhalation of NO gas. This has provided good results and even saved lives. For instance, NO gas has been used to reduce dangerously high blood pressure in the lungs of infants. But the dosage is critical since the gas can be toxic at high concentrations.
Cancer: White blood cells use NO not only to kill infectious agents such as bacteria, fungi and parasites, but also to defend the host against tumors. Scientists are currently testing whether NO can be used to stop the growth of tumors since this gas can induce programmed cell death, apoptosis.
Impotence: NO can initiate erection of the penis by dilating the blood vessels to the erectile bodies. This knowledge has already led to the development of new drugs against impotence.
Diagnostic analyses: Inflammatory diseases can be revealed by analyzing the production of NO from e.g. lungs and intestines. This is used for diagnosing asthma, colitis, and other diseases.
NO is important for the olfactory sense and our capacity to recognize different scents. It may even be important for our memory.
Ongoing research is showing us the diverse benefits of Nitric Oxide (NO2), providing new alternatives to improve health for humans, horses and all mammals.
Nitric Oxide Quotes
“One of the most exciting new findings in cardiovascular medicine involves the molecule nitric oxide or NO. We now know that our bodies produce nitric oxide in the endothelium, a delicate tissue that is the inner lining of the blood vessel. The endothelium is so significant to blood vessel health that I predict that in the next few years the health of your endothelium will become as important as cholesterol to your doctor.”
The Cardiovascular Cure
John P. Cooke M.D., Ph. D.
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NO helps maintain blood pressure by dilating blood vessels, helps kill foreign invaders in the immune response, is a mediator of penile erection, and is probably a major biochemical component of long-term memory… [these are] just a few of it benefits…
-The editors of the highly prestigious journal Science, after voting nitric oxide the 1992 molecule of the year.
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Excerpt from “A Short History of Nearly Everything”
By Bill Bryson Random House, 2003
“Surprises at the cellular level turn up all the time. In Nature, nitric oxide is a formidable toxin and a common component of air pollution. So scientist were naturally a little surprised when in the mid-1980s, they found it being produced in a curiously devoted manner in human cells. Its purpose was at first a mystery, but then scientists began to find it all over the place-controlling the flow of blood and energy levels of cells, attacking cancers and other pathogens, regulating the sense of smell, even assisting in penile erections. It also explained why nitroglycerine, the well known explosive, soothed the heart pain known as angina. (It is converted into nitric oxide in the blood stream, relaxing the muscle linings of vessels, allowing blood to flow more freely.) In barely the space of a decade this one gassy substance went from extraneous toxin to ubiquitous elixir”.
“I have been immersed in biological research for more than half a century, and in 1982, received the Nobel Prize for my discovery of a prostaglandin that was called prostacylin…..
Over the last 50 years biologists have discovered many different mediators or chemical messengers, which transmit signals from one cell to another……
Less than 15 years ago a different and very potent mediator of blood vessel relaxation and inhibition of platelet clumping was identified as Nitric Oxide (NO). It is the simplest messenger of them all……
There are special enzymes that generate NO from Arginine and we now know it has important functions in the brain, the immune system and vasculature…..”
Sir John Vane, D.Sc. F.R.S.
Nobel Laureate 1982
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“Arginine-derived nitric oxide, or ADNO, is a multi faceted molecular marvel, one made all the more amazing by the fact that researchers only recently discovered that it even exists inside human tissues.”
The Arginine Solution
Robert Fried, Ph., D. Woodson C. Merrell, M.D.