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Dr. Gorbach holds professorships in the Departments of Public Health, Medicine, and Molecular Biology and Microbiology at Tufts Medical School. He is also a Professor in the Gerald J. and Dorothy R. Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. He graduated Tufts University School of Medicine in 1962. After internship and residency in internal medicine at Cornell-Bellevue Medical Center, he returned to the New England Medical Center for a fellowship in infectious disease. He received additional postgraduate training in parasitology and entomology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and in gastroenterology at the Hammersmith Royal Postgraduate Medical School in London. He has conducted studies of enteric infections and nutrition in India and Latin America. Based on extensive investigations on the intestinal microflora which were initiated in 1964, Dr. Gorbach began studies of anaerobic bacteria in surgical and gynecological infections in 1969. He introduced clindamycin as an anti-anaerobe drug and showed that it was efficacious in treating intraabdominal infections. He and his colleagues conducted the first randomized, clinical trial of anaerobic infections by studying clindamycin-aminoglycoside versus cephalothin-aminoglycoside in penetrating abdominal trauma. Working with Ron Nichols and Robert Condon, the neomycin-erythromycin bowel prep was devised and tested in patients. He participated in the subsequent VA Hospital multicenter trials that established this regimen as a safe and effective bowel prep for elective colon operations, lowering postoperative wound infections from 39% to 8%. He has participated in many antibiotic drug trials including those involving clindamycin, cefoxitin, cefotetan, amikacin, vancomycin, bacitracin, imipenem, and ciprofloxacin. He and his colleagues at Tufts reported in 1978 that Clostridium difficile was the cause of pseudomembranous colitis and then described the cytotoxin assay which is still used for diagnosis. Dr. Gorbach began research on lactic acid bacteria and fermented milk products in 1964. Along with Dr. Barry Goldin, he undertook a discovery program for improved probiotic strains in 1983. As a result of this effort, Lactobacillus GG (LGG) was discovered in 1985. Research on the beneficial properties of LGG was begun at that time and continues to this day. This probiotic is now marketed in 40 countries as a dairy product or in a tablet form. Since 1969, Dr. Gorbach has been continuously funded as a principal investigator by the National Institutes of Health for research in gastrointestinal infections and nutrition. He was awarded a MERIT Award in 1986 for studies of diet and breast cancer. Currently he is principal investigator on a Center grant for studying nutrition and metabolic issues in drug abusers with HIV in four cities in the USA and in India, Viet Nam and Argentina. Dr. Gorbach has published over 550 papers and has authored nineteen books. He serves as editor of CLINICAL INFECTIOUS DISEASES. | 