Aussies take Nobel Prize in Medicine

Two Australian researchers who discovered that stomach ulcers are caused by a bacterium, not by emotional stress or spicy foods, today won the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

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The researchers "produced one of the most radical and important changes in the last 50 years in the perception of a medical condition," said Lord May of Oxford, president of the Royal Society. "Their results led to the recognition that gastric disorders are infectious diseases, and overturned the previous view that they were physiological illnesses."

But the pair faced years of ridicule not only from fellow scientists but also from a pharmaceutical industry that was heavily invested in producing antacids for controlling the symptoms of ulcer.

The ultimate acceptance of their idea began when Marshall swallowed a flask of H pylori, developing a severe case of gastritis. Acceptance grew when physicians observed that ulcers could be speedily cured with a short course of antibiotics and bismuth compounds that killed the bacteria.