Einosuke Harada

Einosuke Harada
Einosuke Harada
Born	February 25, 1892 Amakusa District Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan
Died	December 20, 1946 Nagasaki, Nagasaki Prefecture
Nationality	Japan
Occupation	Physician (First Internist, then Ophtalmologist), Army doctor
Known for	Reported in detail a disease now called Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada syndrome

Einosuke Harada (原田 永之助, Harada Einosuke, February 25, 1892 - December 20, 1946) was a Japanese ophthalmologist who reported a condition which later was named Vogt–Koyanagi–Harada syndrome.

Life and Works

He was born in Goryo, Amakusa District,　Kumamoto Prefecture in 1892 and grew up in Taragi, Kuma District, and Kumamoto, Kumamoto Prefecture. While attending the Medical Faculty, Tokyo Imperial University, he became an army-doctor-to-be. He graduated from Tokyo University in 1917. After studying internal medicine, he entered the Department of Ophthalmology under Professor Shinobu Ishihara in January, 1922.^[1] In December, 1922 he first reported "A case of acute diffuse choroiditis with retinal detachment" at a meeting of ophthalmologists in Tokyo. The original work was "Addentum to the clinical findings on non-suppurative chorioititis (on acute diffuse chorioiditis)". Acta Societatis ophthalmologicae Japonicae, (Nihon Ganka Gakkai Zasshi), 1926, 30: 356-378.^[2] He later worked in Nagasaki with his father-in-law, who was also an ophthalmologist. In 1937, he became an army doctor; he was later stationed in the Philippines. In 1945, his office was destroyed by A-bomb. On December 20, 1946, he died of pneumonia at the age of 54.

On the name of Harada's disease

Prof. Shinobu Ishihara, famous for his color blind charts, wrote in 1937^[3] since Harada wrote on this condition in 1926, there had been no mention of "Harada's" disease. It appeared very abruptly in 1929 by Dr. Takahashi of Kyoto University. Since then, this name had become in use naturally, and I have no objection to this use.

Recent View of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease

^[4]

• In 2007, Herbort CP and Mochizuki M studied the history of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease and concluded that it is one disease and many ophthalmologists have contributed to this condition.

Arabic Doctor

• Several authors, including the Arabic doctor Mohammad-al-Ghâfiqî in the 12th century as well as Jacobi, Nettelship and Tay in the 19th century, described poliosis, neuralgias and hearing disorders. Many of these cases were probably due to sympathetic ophthalmia, but some were clearly VKH cases.

Vogt

• The second phase is characterized by the surge of articles that appeared early in the 20th century that defined the disease more precisely. A number of these authors subsequently became associated with the disease name, the first being Alfred Vogt from Switzerland, followed by Japanese researchers.

Japanese ophthalmologists

• Yoshizo Koyanagi was in fact not the first Japanese author to describe the disease; this honor goes to the first Japanese Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Tokyo, Dr. Jujiro Komoto, who published in a German language journal, Klinische Monatsblätter für Augenheilkunde in 1911. Yoshizo Koyanagi published his first report in the Nippon Ganka Gakkai Zasshi 3 years later, in 1914, but it was a much later article, one published in 1929, that definitively associated his name with the disease. In this review article, Koyanagi reported 16 cases, of which six were his own cases, that beautifully illustrate the natural course of the disease. In this same time period, Einosuke Harada, in an article published in Nippon Ganka Gakkai Zasshi in 1926 that was based on several case studies, comprehensively described a syndrome that included (1) a prodromal phase of malaise and meningeal irritation; (2) bilateral uveitis of diverse intensity; (3) bilateral retinal detachments spontaneously resolving; (4) integumentary changes; (5) lymphocytosis of the spinal fluid; (6) dysacousia. It is now accepted that Vogt-Koyanagi disease and the syndrome described by Harada are one entity with a diverse clinical spectrum bearing the universally accepted name of Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease.

Recent Studies

• The third phase and most recent phase is characterized by the rapid progress made in terms of knowledge of the physiopathology of the disease, primarily due to the development of immunological methods. The evidence accumulated to date clearly points towards an autoimmune Th1 disease directed against proteins associated with choroidal melanin. Other analytical techniques, such as indocyanine green angiography, have enabled researchers to monitor more closely the primary lesional process at the level of the choroid, and standardized diagnostic criteria have been generated in the recent past.

References

• e-Medicine, Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada Disease
• Whonamedit

Notes

1. ↑ Recollections, Works and Poems of Dr. Einosuke Harada (1979) Minami K. Kurume City
2. ↑ Addentum to the clinical findings on non-suppurative chorioititis (on acute diffuse chorioiditis). Acta Societatis ophthalmologicae Japonicae, (Nihon Ganka Gakkai Zasshi, 1926, 30: 356-378.
3. ↑ Studies on Harada's disease(1937), Ishihara S. Commemorative book of the 15 years of Prof. Ishihara, Tokyo
4. ↑ Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease: inquiry into the genesis of a disease name in the historical context of Switzerland and Japan.(2007) Herbort CP, Mochizuki M. Int Ophthalmol 27,67-79.