Garret Adare FitzGerald

Discoveries contributed in a fundamental way to the adoption of low dose aspirin for cardioprotection and more recently refined use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), including those selective for COX-2. Work directly influenced dose and disease selection in the first placebo controlled trials that demonstrated secondary prevention of myocardial infarction from aspirin. Was the first to predict, initially based on mechanistic studies in humans, that a cardiovascular hazard might complicate NSAIDs selective for inhibition of COX-2, such as celecoxib and rofecoxib. Work afforded a framework which predicted not just the cardiovascular hazard from structurally distinct, novel NSAIDs selective for COX-2, but also heterogeneity with respect to cardiovascular risk amongst the traditional NSAIDs. Discovered the cardiovascular clock, described the first molecular mechanism by which a hormone phase shifts a peripheral clock, was the first to implicate molecular clock dysfunction in the metabolic syndrome and the first to describe a signaling mechanism from a peripheral clock to reset master clock behavior.