J. Robin Warren
& Barry J. Marshall

Barry J. Marshall and J. Robin Warren (medeas.lemonde.fr)

J. Robin Warren and Barry J. Marshall are from Perth in Western Australia. They received the Nobel Prize in 2005 for Medicine for their discovery of how the bacterium Helicobacter pylori, not stress, creates stomach and intestinal ulcers. Helicobacter pylori is found in the stomach of 50% of humans. Infection is usually small in early childhood, and the bacteria might remain in the stomach for life. It can start ulcers in 10-15% of people with the bacterium.

J. Robin Warren was born in 1937 in Adelaide. He is an Australian pathologist and researcher. He discovered Helicobacter pylori in 1979. He has worked the majority of his career at the Royal Perth Hospital. Dr. Warren helped create a breath test to detect Helicobacter pylori.

Helicobactor pylori (sciencewa.net.au)

Barry J. Marshall was born in 1951. He is an Australian physician and a Professor of Clinical Microbiology at the University of Western Australia.

Everyone disagreed with Dr. Warren and Dr. Marshall’s theory because they didn’t believe bacteria could survive in acid. So, Dr. Marshall drank a Petri-dish filled with Helicobacter pylori and developed gastritis. This was soon resolved with antibiotics. After Professor Marshall proved his point, he moved to teach at the University of Virginia, USA. Professor Barry Marshall met J. Robin Warren during internal medicine training at the Royal Perth Hospital in 1981.

Because of Dr. Warren and Professor Marshall, stomach ulcers can be cured with a short-term dose of antibiotics and are not a big problem.