| Didier Raoult | |
|---|---|
| Born | 1952 |
| Nationality | French |
| Fields | Microbiology |
| Institutions | Hospital of Timone University of the Mediterranean |
Didier Raoult (born in 1952) is a French biology researcher. He hold MD and PhD degrees, and specializes in infectious diseases. He "is classified among the first ten French researchers by the journal Nature, for the number of his publications (a credit of more than one thousand) and for his citations number, as it was reported in 2008 by the daily economic newspaper resuming his work."[1] In 1984, he created the Rickettsia Unit at the University of the Mediterranean. He also teaches infectious diseases in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of the Mediterranean, and had managed since 1982, 74 M.D. theses and since 1989, 38 PhD theses. As of 2010[update], he has 1,257 indexed publications, with a sum of the times cited of 25,741 and a H-index of 73 (source: SCI, Web of Science), including 5 papers in Science and 2 in Nature, (source: PubMed) the two most representative reviews according to the academic ranking of world universities.
Since 2008, professor Raoult has been the director the “URMITE” i.e. the Research Unit in Infectious and Tropical Emergent Diseases, collaborating with CNRS (National Center for the Scientific Research), IRD (Research for the Development Institute), and the University of the Méditerranée in Marseille. His laboratory employs 140 people, including 45 very active researchers who publish between 150 and 200 papers per year,[1] and had produced 25 patents to date.
Contents |
Raoult's team carried out the discovery of very large sizes of viruses :
Since the 1990s, Raoult and his team have identified and described approximately 96 new pathogenic bacteria[1] and showed their implication in human pathologies. Two bacteria have been named for him: Raoultella planticola and Rickettsia raoultii.
Raoult developed the field of the intracellular bacteria culture, then initiated the field of the emergent rickettsioses and with his team could identify 10 new human pathogenic Rickettsia species. The laboratory quickly became a National Reference Center (partnership with InVS : National Health Institute) and a WHO collaborator center.
For Bartonella, the team was the first to identify their role in endocarditis.
For Q fever, a disease transmitted by the bacterial agent Coxiella burnetii, the whole of the diagnostic protocols as well on serologic as molecular biology aspects were set up at the laboratory.[5]
Tropheryma whipplei, the causal agent of Whipple's disease, was described in 1907 by George Hoyt Whipple, M.D., but was isolated for the first time in Raoult's laboratory.[6] The discovery of this bacteria completely changed the profile of the disease and it is now shown that the bacteria is relatively common in the environment and the stools.[7]
Mediterranean Habour, Marseilles has been exposed to multiple epidemics. This led Raoult's laboratory to collaborate with anthropologists and odontologists teams, in order to identify the cause of the plague epidemics. They developed an original technique of DNA extraction from dental pulp and showed that Yersina pestis orientalis was at the origin of various plague epidemics (Justinian plague and medieval plague). This also led them to elucidate the cause of death of many of Napoleon’s soldiers during the Russian retreat, following the discovery of a mass grave in Vilnius. The possibilities of new discovery in this field are varied and promising.[8]
In 1999, Raoult decided to start a new program of genomics and to apply this to clinical microbiology. The team started with Rickettsia conorii and since then, 24 bacterial genomes have been sequenced, as well as those of 7 giant viruses (14 of these 31 sequenced genomes having been published)[9]
The last field of research developed by Raoult represents for him major question of public health. It relates to handling of the intestinal flora and obesity.[10] Raoult is investigating whether there is a link between probiotics added in the industrial dairy products and obesity.
In the journal Nature Reviews Microbiology of September 2009, Raoult indicates: "humans, particularly children, have been taking these same probiotics for many years, especially in fermented dairy products" and they would have their share of responsibility in the human obesity epidemic …" [11]