Hugh Gurling

Hugh Malcolm Douglas Gurling (6 May 1950 – 2 November 2013) was an English medical geneticist who specialised in the role of genetics and mental health. He led a molecular psychiatry laboratory at University College, London.^[1]

Early life

Gurling was born in London on 6 May 1950, and brought up in Derbyshire.^[2] His father, Kenneth Gurling, was a physician and inaugural dean of the University of Nottingham. His mother, Nonie Sempill, was a nurse.

Education

He attended Sutton Valence School in Maidstone, Kent, before obtaining a medical degree from King's College London in 1973.^[2] He subsequently specialised in psychiatry at Guy’s Hospital and then at the Maudsley Hospital.^[2]

Career

He began his research career in 1976, working with Professor Robin Murray at the Institute of Psychiatry on the genetics of alcoholism.^[3]

Gurling sought genes that would cause caused schizophrenia, bipolar disorder (manic depression) and alcoholism. In this, he had an approach that was unusual for the time, when social and psychological factors were perceived as being more important than genetics. Part of the reason for this consensus was that the idea that genes could play a significant role in people's behaviour (with the consequent associations with mental illness) conflicted with the idea of free will, and would, if proven, have implications for judicial policy.^[2]

Gurling studied statistics at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine in 1977, before working at Stanford University as a Wellcome training scholar^[3] in 1981. In 1987 he moved to UCL where he set up Britain’s first molecular psychiatry laboratory. Here, he held the title of 'Professor of Molecular Psychiatry'.^[2]

Collaboration with researchers in Iceland, (where large families and exceptional genealogical records made it possible to identify DNA markers for schizophrenia) led, in 1988, to an article by Gurling in the journal Nature. The paper suggested that a particular chromosome, chromosome 5, contained a gene which caused schizophrenia.^[2]

Later work by his laboratory found genes involved in expressing neurotransmitter receptor proteins, which have been linked with psychosis. He published a paper showing that highly informative markers called microsatellites could be used in gene-mapping studies. He was also involved in work showing that small changes (sometimes to single DNA bases) in DNA dramatically affected the risks of schizophrenia and manic depression.^[3]

His last research work, (published in the Journal of the American Medical Association — Psychiatry in April 2013) suggested a realistic prospect of personalised medicine in psychiatry.^[2]

Throughout his career, he continued to carry out clinic work as well as research, including a psychiatric intensive care unit, treating patients too severely psychotic to be safely managed on ordinary wards.^[3]

Personal life

Gurling had a serious interest in current affairs from his youth, and 'held strong views on the need for social justice and was deeply committed to the NHS'. He was said to be 'a big, rumbustious, optimistic man with a taste for Hawaiian shirts.' He had a passion for music, and in 1969, after a trip to India with friends, he returned with a sitar and a dilruba, and learned to play both.^[2]

He excelled at the sports of squash and rugby, and at one time represented his County in hammer-throwing.^[3]

In 1987, he married Meryl Dahlitz, an academic neuropsychiatrist. They had twins Laurel and Alisdair with an older sister Holly.^[3]

Death

Gurling died of a heart attack on 2 November 2013.^[2]

Legacy

Although Gurling began his career in the 1970s, one obituary of him has argued that 'it is only [since 2003] that the psychiatric establishment has begun to see the potential of the research that Gurling pioneered.' Techniques used by Gurling's UCL laboratory - which he continued to run until his death - are said to have become the standard approach for identifying disease-causing genes in hundreds of diseases, and is regarded as a 'world leader' in the field of psychiatric genetics,^[2] a field which has been cited as 'potentially the greatest source of biological insights and advances in [mental health] treatment'.^[3]

References