Nobel prizes: contributions to cardiology

Who is who in cardiovascular research? What a review of Nobel Prize nominations reveals about scientific trends

Background

Since 1901, at least 15 scholars who contributed to cardiovascular research have received a Nobel prize in physiology or medicine.

Methods

Using the Nobel nomination database (nobelprize.org), which contains 5950 nominations in the accessible period from 1901 to 1953 in physiology or medicine, we listed all international nominees who contributed to cardiovascular research. We subsequently collected nomination letters and jury reports of the prime candidates from the archive of the Nobel Committee in Sweden to identify shortlisted candidates.

Results

The five most frequently nominated researchers with cardiovascular connections from 1901 to 1953 were, in descending order, the surgeon René Leriche (1879–1955) (FR) with a total of 79 nominations, the physiologist and 1924 Nobel laureate Willem Einthoven (1860–1927) (NL) (31 nominations), the surgeon Alfred Blalock (1899–1964) (US) (29 nominations), the pharmacologist and 1936 Nobel laureate Otto Loewi (1873–1961) (DE, AT, US) (27 nominations) and the paediatric cardiologist Helen Taussig (1898–1986) (US) (24 nominations). The research of these scholars merely hints at the width of topics brought up by nominators ranging from the physiological and pathological basics to the diagnosis and (surgical) interventions of diseases such as heart malformation or hypertension.

Conclusion

We argue that an analysis of Nobel Prize nominations can reconstruct important scientific trends within cardiovascular research during the first half of the twentieth century.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00392-021-01813-2.

Carlos Chagas Discoveries as a Drop Back to Scientific Construction of Chronic Chagas Heart Disease

The scientific construction of chronic Chagas heart disease (CCHD) started in 1910 when Carlos Chagas highlighted the presence of cardiac arrhythmia during physical examination of patients with chronic Chagas disease, and described a case of heart failure associated with myocardial inflammation and nests of parasites at autopsy. He described sudden cardiac death associated with arrhythmias in 1911, and its association with complete AV block detected by Jacquet's polygraph as Chagas reported in 1912. Chagas showed the presence of myocardial fibrosis underlying the clinical picture of CCHD in 1916, he presented a full characterization of the clinical aspects of CCHD in 1922. In 1928, Chagas detected fibrosis of the conductive system, and pointed out the presence of marked cardiomegaly at the chest X-Ray associated with minimal symptomatology. The use of serological reaction to diagnose CCHD was put into clinical practice in 1936, after Chagas' death, which along with the 12-lead ECG, revealed the epidemiological importance of CCHD in 1945. In 1953, the long period between initial infection and appearance of CCHD was established, whereas the annual incidence of CCHD from patients with the indeterminate form of the disease was established in 1956. The use of heart catheterization in 1965, exercise stress testing in 1973, Holter monitoring in 1975, Electrophysiologic testing in 1973, echocardiography in 1975, endomyocardial biopsy in 1981, and Magnetic Resonance Imaging in 1995, added to the fundamental clinical aspects of CCHD as described by Carlos Chagas.