Edward D. Freis

Edward David Freis ( born May 13, 1912 in Chicago, Illinois; † 1 February 2005) was an American physician, known for clinical trials of hypertension.

Frei was the son of Lithuanian immigrants, and studied at the University of Arizona with a bachelor 's degree in 1936 and Medicine at Columbia University with the MD degree. After working as a Medical Assistant ( Internship ) at hospitals in Boston he went to the Army Air Corps from 1942 to 1944 and headed the laboratory at the Lincoln Air Force Base and then the research program on rheumatic fever. After the war he continued the specialist training continued with a residency at Evans Memorial Hospital in Boston with Robert W. Wilkins. He turned to the research in high blood pressure in the United States Veterans Affairs Administration (VA ) in Washington DC At the same time he taught at Georgetown University, where he was Director of the Cardiovascular Research Laboratory and Director of the Hypertension Clinic later. In 1949 he became Assistant Chief of the Medical Service of the VA and its director in 1953. In 1959 he was promoted to Senior Medical Investigator at the VA.

In the 1950s and 1960s, led by Freis clinical studies that demonstrated the dangers of high blood pressure, for example by increased risk of stroke and heart failure. In 1954 he published a study on the effect of reserpine in hypertension patients. 1964 to 1969, he led a five -year study ( the Veterans Administration Cooperative Study on Antihypertensive Agents ), which showed that antihypertensive agents strokes and heart disease (as well as kidney damage ) could help avoid. She was one of the first large-scale randomized multi-institutional double-blind studies in the United States. In 1971 he received the Lasker ~ DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award.

Writings

• Gina Kolata of The high blood pressure book, Sausalito: Painter Hopkins 1979
• Reviews of John H. Moyer (eds.) Hypertension, Saunders 1959