Gerald Domingue
Encyclopedia
Gerald Domingue is an American
medical researcher (bacteriology
, immunology
, experimental urology
) and academic who served as Professor of Urology, Microbiology
and Immunology in the Tulane University
School of Medicine and Graduate School for thirty years and also as Director of Research in Urology. He is currently retired and resides in Zurich
, Switzerland
, where he is engaged in painting and creative writing (www.dlareg-arts.com). At retirement he was honored with the title of Professor Emeritus at Tulane (1967–1997). Prior to Tulane, he served on the faculty of St. Louis University (school of medicine); was a lecturer at Washington University (school of dentistry) and director of clinical microbiology in St. Louis City Hospital (Snodgrass Laboratory of Pathology and Bacteriology), St. Louis, Missouri
.
Over the course of his thirty-nine year career, Domingue received funding from the National Institutes of Health
, Veterans Administration
, and a variety of national and international research foundations; served on grant review committees of these agencies as well as consultant to various journal review boards. He also served as clinical microbiology and research consultant to hospital clinical laboratories and to industry. He enjoys international recognition as an authority on the basic biology and medical significance of atypical bacterial organisms and is considered a pioneer and an expert on the role of these unusual bacteria in the persistence and expression of kidney and urological infectious diseases.
Domingue was named a Fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology (1973) and a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (1975). In 1995, he received the prestigious Palmes Academiques Medal
(Chevalier) from the country of France.
. He was educated at Southwestern Louisiana Institute (presently University of Louisiana at Lafayette
, LA), receiving the Bachelor of Science degree in three years (bacteriology with minors in chemistry and French); matriculating to graduate school at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (presently University of Louisiana at Lafayette
)(graduate courses in bacteriology, atomic physics and advanced qualitative organic chemistry; served as instructor of laboratory courses in bacteriology and immunology in university); Louisiana State University
(basic medical sciences) and Tulane University where he earned the doctorate (1964); holds the Ph.D. degree in medical microbiology and immunology; followed by a postdoctoral research fellowship in microbiology/infectious diseases and a residency in clinical microbiology under the mentorship of the late distinguished bacteriologist/immunologist, Erwin Neter at The Children's Hospital of the State University of New York
, Buffalo, New York
.
He first became interested in the role of atypical bacterial forms after noting that a large number of patients with urinary tract infections suffer from continual relapsing illness. Using a direct phase microscope, he examined the urine specimens of several patients with urinary tract infections and found atypical bacteria
in his samples.
He began to investigate atypical bacteria (cell wall-defective, L-forms and difficult-to-culture bacteria) striving to better understand their biology and the role they play in causing disease. Over the course of the next 30 years, he was able to explain much of the mystery behind how the bacteria are able to persist in the body, and published a wide array of clinical and experimental studies on the subject.
The electron dense bodies could persist inside tissue culture cells in the laboratory. After applying these data to the human condition, Domingue reasoned that in some patients who suffer from chronic bacterial infections, the disease process could be related to the fact that bacteria are able to differentiate into the resistant electron dense bodies that he observed in tissue cultures.
These papers set the stage for Domingue and his team to delve even further into the role that cryptic atypical bacteria play in causing persistent and recurrent infections.
In 1997, he and a colleague, the late Hannah Woody published an invited extensive review article on chronic bacterial infection in Clinical Microbiological Reviews. Among their conclusions was the claim that "difficult to culture and dormant bacteria are involved in the latency of infection and that these persistent bacteria may be pathogenic."
He implicated atypical bacteria in several kidney-related diseases including pyelonephritis
, glomerulonephritis
, idiopathic hematuria, and interstitial cystitis
. He also speculated about their role in other diseases such as rheumatic fever
, tuberculosis
, syphilis
, and rheumatoid arthritis
.
In the review Domingue stated, "Clearly, any patient with a history of recurrent infection and persistent disability is sending the signal that the phenomenon (infection with atypical bacteria) could be occurring. The so-called autoimmune diseases in which no organism can be identified by routine testing techniques are particularly suspect." He went on to conclude, "Bacteriologic advances, which include special culture media and stains, electron microscopy and molecular techniques such as PCR (polymerase chain reaction
), have revealed an increasing number of previously unidentifiable organisms in a variety of pathologic conditions. It is unwise to dismiss the pathogenic capacities of any microbe in a patient with a mysterious disease." Over the course of his thirty-nine year career Domingue published numerous papers, monographs, and book chapters devoted to atypical bacterial research. He delivered many invited international and national lectures about bacterial persistence and expression of disease and wrote a book on the subject, Cell Wall-Deficient Bacteria: Basic Principles and Clinical Significance.
, and vaccine potential against urinary tract infections.
He studied the immunological consequences of a vasectomy
, as well as the role of various gram negative pathogens in the host-pathogen interaction in pyelonephritis, and the effects of antibiotics and chemotherapy on urinary tract infections.
He also published microbiological and immunological studies on bacteria that produce chorionic gonadotropin-like hormone and their role in an experimental tumor model.
He was even the co-author of a publication that characterized the oral microbial flora of alligators in order to develop better therapy for
alligator bites. [ref]Flandry,F.,Lisecki,E.J.,Domingue,G.J.,Nichols,R.L.,Greer,D.L.,Haddad, R.J. Initial Therapy for Alligator Bites. Characterization of the Oral Flora of Alligator mississippiens. Southern Medical Journal, volume 82, pages 262-266, 1989.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
medical researcher (bacteriology
Bacteriology
Bacteriology is the study of bacteria. This subdivision of microbiology involves the identification, classification, and characterization of bacterial species...
, immunology
Immunology
Immunology is a broad branch of biomedical science that covers the study of all aspects of the immune system in all organisms. It deals with the physiological functioning of the immune system in states of both health and diseases; malfunctions of the immune system in immunological disorders ; the...
, experimental urology
Urology
Urology is the medical and surgical specialty that focuses on the urinary tracts of males and females, and on the reproductive system of males. Medical professionals specializing in the field of urology are called urologists and are trained to diagnose, treat, and manage patients with urological...
) and academic who served as Professor of Urology, Microbiology
Microbiology
Microbiology is the study of microorganisms, which are defined as any microscopic organism that comprises either a single cell , cell clusters or no cell at all . This includes eukaryotes, such as fungi and protists, and prokaryotes...
and Immunology in the Tulane University
Tulane University
Tulane University is a private, nonsectarian research university located in New Orleans, Louisiana, United States...
School of Medicine and Graduate School for thirty years and also as Director of Research in Urology. He is currently retired and resides in Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...
, Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, where he is engaged in painting and creative writing (www.dlareg-arts.com). At retirement he was honored with the title of Professor Emeritus at Tulane (1967–1997). Prior to Tulane, he served on the faculty of St. Louis University (school of medicine); was a lecturer at Washington University (school of dentistry) and director of clinical microbiology in St. Louis City Hospital (Snodgrass Laboratory of Pathology and Bacteriology), St. Louis, Missouri
Missouri
Missouri is a US state located in the Midwestern United States, bordered by Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska. With a 2010 population of 5,988,927, Missouri is the 18th most populous state in the nation and the fifth most populous in the Midwest. It...
.
Over the course of his thirty-nine year career, Domingue received funding from the National Institutes of Health
National Institutes of Health
The National Institutes of Health are an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and are the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. Its science and engineering counterpart is the National Science Foundation...
, Veterans Administration
United States Department of Veterans Affairs
The United States Department of Veterans Affairs is a government-run military veteran benefit system with Cabinet-level status. It is the United States government’s second largest department, after the United States Department of Defense...
, and a variety of national and international research foundations; served on grant review committees of these agencies as well as consultant to various journal review boards. He also served as clinical microbiology and research consultant to hospital clinical laboratories and to industry. He enjoys international recognition as an authority on the basic biology and medical significance of atypical bacterial organisms and is considered a pioneer and an expert on the role of these unusual bacteria in the persistence and expression of kidney and urological infectious diseases.
Domingue was named a Fellow of the American Academy for Microbiology (1973) and a Fellow of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (1975). In 1995, he received the prestigious Palmes Academiques Medal
Palmes académiques
The Ordre des Palmes Académiques is an Order of Chivalry of France for academics and cultural and educational figures...
(Chevalier) from the country of France.
Education and early work
Domingue was born in 1937 in Lafayette, LouisianaLafayette, Louisiana
Lafayette is a city in and the parish seat of Lafayette Parish, Louisiana, United States, on the Vermilion River. The population was 120,623 at the 2010 census...
. He was educated at Southwestern Louisiana Institute (presently University of Louisiana at Lafayette
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, or UL Lafayette, is a coeducational, public research university located in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the heart of Acadiana...
, LA), receiving the Bachelor of Science degree in three years (bacteriology with minors in chemistry and French); matriculating to graduate school at the University of Southwestern Louisiana (presently University of Louisiana at Lafayette
University of Louisiana at Lafayette
The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, or UL Lafayette, is a coeducational, public research university located in Lafayette, Louisiana, in the heart of Acadiana...
)(graduate courses in bacteriology, atomic physics and advanced qualitative organic chemistry; served as instructor of laboratory courses in bacteriology and immunology in university); Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College, most often referred to as Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public coeducational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. The University was founded in 1853 in what is now known as Pineville, Louisiana, under the name...
(basic medical sciences) and Tulane University where he earned the doctorate (1964); holds the Ph.D. degree in medical microbiology and immunology; followed by a postdoctoral research fellowship in microbiology/infectious diseases and a residency in clinical microbiology under the mentorship of the late distinguished bacteriologist/immunologist, Erwin Neter at The Children's Hospital of the State University of New York
State University of New York
The State University of New York, abbreviated SUNY , is a system of public institutions of higher education in New York, United States. It is the largest comprehensive system of universities, colleges, and community colleges in the United States, with a total enrollment of 465,000 students, plus...
, Buffalo, New York
Buffalo, New York
Buffalo is the second most populous city in the state of New York, after New York City. Located in Western New York on the eastern shores of Lake Erie and at the head of the Niagara River across from Fort Erie, Ontario, Buffalo is the seat of Erie County and the principal city of the...
.
He first became interested in the role of atypical bacterial forms after noting that a large number of patients with urinary tract infections suffer from continual relapsing illness. Using a direct phase microscope, he examined the urine specimens of several patients with urinary tract infections and found atypical bacteria
Atypical bacteria
Atypical bacteria are bacteria which remain colourless after gram-staining....
in his samples.
He began to investigate atypical bacteria (cell wall-defective, L-forms and difficult-to-culture bacteria) striving to better understand their biology and the role they play in causing disease. Over the course of the next 30 years, he was able to explain much of the mystery behind how the bacteria are able to persist in the body, and published a wide array of clinical and experimental studies on the subject.
L-form bacteria – electron dense bodies
Domingue worked with a team that included pre and post-doctoral students and fellows along with faculty colleagues and laboratory assistants. Together they discovered that L-form bacteria are able to form tiny dense bodies within parent cells that already lack cell walls. They noted that the forms, which they called electron dense bodies were so small that they could pass through bacterial filters that normally withheld ordinary bacteria with cell walls.The electron dense bodies could persist inside tissue culture cells in the laboratory. After applying these data to the human condition, Domingue reasoned that in some patients who suffer from chronic bacterial infections, the disease process could be related to the fact that bacteria are able to differentiate into the resistant electron dense bodies that he observed in tissue cultures.
Significant papers
In 1974, he and his graduate student, Mary Green, along with Paul Heidger, a faculty collaborator, published two landmark companion papers in the journal Infection and Immunity. The papers detail how L-form bacteria inside an experimental human embryonic kidney tissue culture system are able to persist in cells and explains how they are able to revert into the cell wall-containing parent bacterial form. They also proposed a detailed reproductive cycle for L-form bacteria, followed by electron microscopy of the microorganisms.These papers set the stage for Domingue and his team to delve even further into the role that cryptic atypical bacteria play in causing persistent and recurrent infections.
In 1997, he and a colleague, the late Hannah Woody published an invited extensive review article on chronic bacterial infection in Clinical Microbiological Reviews. Among their conclusions was the claim that "difficult to culture and dormant bacteria are involved in the latency of infection and that these persistent bacteria may be pathogenic."
He implicated atypical bacteria in several kidney-related diseases including pyelonephritis
Pyelonephritis
Pyelonephritis is an ascending urinary tract infection that has reached the pyelum or pelvis of the kidney. It is a form of nephritis that is also referred to as pyelitis...
, glomerulonephritis
Glomerulonephritis
Glomerulonephritis, also known as glomerular nephritis, abbreviated GN, is a renal disease characterized by inflammation of the glomeruli, or small blood vessels in the kidneys...
, idiopathic hematuria, and interstitial cystitis
Interstitial cystitis
Interstitial cystitis or bladder pain syndrome is a chronic, oftentimes severely debilitating disease of the urinary bladder...
. He also speculated about their role in other diseases such as rheumatic fever
Rheumatic fever
Rheumatic fever is an inflammatory disease that occurs following a Streptococcus pyogenes infection, such as strep throat or scarlet fever. Believed to be caused by antibody cross-reactivity that can involve the heart, joints, skin, and brain, the illness typically develops two to three weeks after...
, tuberculosis
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
, syphilis
Syphilis
Syphilis is a sexually transmitted infection caused by the spirochete bacterium Treponema pallidum subspecies pallidum. The primary route of transmission is through sexual contact; however, it may also be transmitted from mother to fetus during pregnancy or at birth, resulting in congenital syphilis...
, and rheumatoid arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, systemic inflammatory disorder that may affect many tissues and organs, but principally attacks synovial joints. The process produces an inflammatory response of the synovium secondary to hyperplasia of synovial cells, excess synovial fluid, and the development...
.
In the review Domingue stated, "Clearly, any patient with a history of recurrent infection and persistent disability is sending the signal that the phenomenon (infection with atypical bacteria) could be occurring. The so-called autoimmune diseases in which no organism can be identified by routine testing techniques are particularly suspect." He went on to conclude, "Bacteriologic advances, which include special culture media and stains, electron microscopy and molecular techniques such as PCR (polymerase chain reaction
Polymerase chain reaction
The polymerase chain reaction is a scientific technique in molecular biology to amplify a single or a few copies of a piece of DNA across several orders of magnitude, generating thousands to millions of copies of a particular DNA sequence....
), have revealed an increasing number of previously unidentifiable organisms in a variety of pathologic conditions. It is unwise to dismiss the pathogenic capacities of any microbe in a patient with a mysterious disease." Over the course of his thirty-nine year career Domingue published numerous papers, monographs, and book chapters devoted to atypical bacterial research. He delivered many invited international and national lectures about bacterial persistence and expression of disease and wrote a book on the subject, Cell Wall-Deficient Bacteria: Basic Principles and Clinical Significance.
Other research
Although Domingue's primary research focus was on bacterial L-forms, he also published extensively on the biological significance of the enterobacterial common antigen of gram negative bacteria– its antigenicity, immunogenicityImmunogenicity
Immunogenicity is the ability of a particular substance, such as an antigen or epitope, to provoke an immune response in the body of a human or animal.- Immunogenicity :The ability to induce humoral and/or cell-mediated immune responses....
, and vaccine potential against urinary tract infections.
He studied the immunological consequences of a vasectomy
Vasectomy
Vasectomy is a surgical procedure for male sterilization and/or permanent birth control. During the procedure, the vasa deferentia of a man are severed, and then tied/sealed in a manner such to prevent sperm from entering into the seminal stream...
, as well as the role of various gram negative pathogens in the host-pathogen interaction in pyelonephritis, and the effects of antibiotics and chemotherapy on urinary tract infections.
He also published microbiological and immunological studies on bacteria that produce chorionic gonadotropin-like hormone and their role in an experimental tumor model.
He was even the co-author of a publication that characterized the oral microbial flora of alligators in order to develop better therapy for
alligator bites. [ref]Flandry,F.,Lisecki,E.J.,Domingue,G.J.,Nichols,R.L.,Greer,D.L.,Haddad, R.J. Initial Therapy for Alligator Bites. Characterization of the Oral Flora of Alligator mississippiens. Southern Medical Journal, volume 82, pages 262-266, 1989.
External links
- http://www.dlareg-arts.com