Kottsias, George

Kotzias was born in the city of Chania on the island of Crete , Greece , on June 16, 1918. He was the son of Kostas Kottsias, who twice (in 1934 and 1951) was the mayor of Athens . He began his medical research at the University of Athens , but fled to the United States with his father when German troops invaded the city in 1941. He was accepted into Harvard Medical School and graduated with honors two years later. Then Kottsias trained as an intern in the pathology department at Brigham Hospital, then as an intern-researcher in medicine at the main hospital in Massachusetts. He then worked at Rockefeller University and the Brookhaven National Laboratory .

In 1957, Swedish scientist Arvid Karlsson showed that dopamine is a neurotransmitter in the brain , and not just a precursor of norepinephrine , as previously thought. He developed a method for measuring the amount of dopamine in brain tissue and found that the level of dopamine in the basal ganglia (in the area of ​​the brain responsible for movement) was particularly high. Carlsson then discovered during experiments that the use of the drug reserpine in animals causes a decrease in the level of dopamine and a loss of movement control. These effects were similar to the symptoms of Parkinson's disease. Arvid Karlsson was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 2000, together with Eric Kandel and Paul Greengard .

Subsequently, other doctors treated Parkinson’s disease using levodopa (a metabolic precursor of dopamine) and found that it relieves some of the symptoms of the disease in the early stages. Unlike dopamine, levodopa passes the blood-brain barrier. The introduction of the drug, thus, gives an instant positive effect. However, due to the strong toxicity associated with its injection, levodopa did not have practical value as a treatment. George Cottias, however, made a critical comment, which subsequently made the use of the tool successful. Starting with very small doses of levodopa, orally, every two hours under constant observation, and gradually increasing the dose, he was able to prepare patients to take large enough doses to cause a sharp decline in symptoms. The first study of reporting improvements in patients with Parkinson's disease as a result of treatment with levodopa was published in 1968 ^[1] . The result was soon confirmed by other researchers and now Levodopa has become the standard for treating the symptoms of Parkinson's disease.

George Kottsias won the Albert Lasker Prize for Clinical Medical Research in 1969. He received honorary degrees from the Catholic University of Santiago (1969); Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania (1970); University of sv. John in New York (1971); and the University of Athens (1974). Lewis Thomas called him “ one of the greatest figures in American medical science. "

Kottsias is a minor character in the poem by James Merrill "The Changing Light over Sandover."

• National Academy of Sciences Biographical Memoir