Short abstract
Neurologist who revolutionised the treatment of Parkinson's disease
Melvin D Yahr was a pioneer in the development of the amino acid L-dopa as a treatment for Parkinson's disease. In the 1960s he conducted one of the earliest randomised clinical trials of L-dopa—a precursor of dopamine—which showed that the drug could help “unfreeze” people who had the disease, easing symptoms such as rigidity and tremors. The writer and neurologist Olivers Sacks described in his 1974 book Awakenings—later made into a film—how using L-dopa in people with Parkinson's virtually brought statues to life. Nowadays L-dopa remains the most widely used treatment for Parkinson's, with millions of people taking it worldwide.
Yahr's research built on the work of the Nobel laureate Arvid Carlsson, who in the 1950s had shown that Parkinson's could arise from depletion of dopamine. It was not long after Yahr's trial that patients were able to benefit from his revolutionary findings. By 1972, only a few years after the publication of his study, it had been prescribed to 1.5 million people in the United States.
Melvin Yahr was born in 1917 in New York City, the youngest of six children of immigrant orthodox Jewish parents from Austro-Hungary. His father owned a bakery. After qualifying, and internship and residency at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York, he served in the US army from 1944 to 1947 with the rank of major. He rose to H Houston Merritt professor of neurology at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons before becoming professor of neurology and chairman of the department at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, New York City. From 1992 Yahr was the Aidekman professor of neurological research at Mount Sinai.
Figure 1.
Yahr established and later brought to Mount Sinai the country's first multidisciplinary centre for research in Parkinson's disease and related disorders. During his tenure there, he built the department into one of the largest in the country. Under his leadership, the centre, composed of basic scientists and clinical investigators working in various neuroscience disciplines, made significant contributions to the understanding and treatment of these disorders. He helped to train more than 100 neurologists.
He co-wrote more than 300 scientific papers, many on Parkinson's disease, including one in the journal Neurology in 1967 that described a five stage scale, known as the Hoehn-Yahr scale, for determining the severity of Parkinson's.
Yahr, who believed strongly in basic research, was much sought after for his blunt, outspoken opinions. He was consultant to many groups including the National Institute of Neurological Communicative Disorders and Stroke, the National Research Council, the National Academy of Sciences, and the New York City Board of Education. He was president of the American Board of Neurology and Psychiatry, the American Neurological Association, and the Association for Research in Nervous and Mental Diseases.
Predeceased by his wife, Felicia, he leaves four daughters and five grandchildren.
Melvin D Yahr, emeritus professor of neurology Mount Sinai Medical Center, New York City (b New York City 1917; q New York University 1943), died from lung cancer on 1 January 2004.