Tsai-Fan Yu RIP
Tsai-Fan Yu, 95, Physician, Dies; Helped Alleviate Gout
By JEREMY PEARCE
Published: March 12, 2007
Dr. Tsai-Fan Yu, a physician and researcher at Mount Sinai Medical
Center who helped explain a principal cause of gout and evaluated
early drugs to treat the disease that are still in use, died on March
2 in Manhattan. She was 95.
The cause was respiratory complications after a stroke, her family
said.
In the 1950s, Dr. Yu helped to found a groundbreaking clinic at Mount
Sinai to treat gout, which causes a painful inflammation of the
joints not unlike arthritis. Working with Dr. Alexander B. Gutman,
who was a chairman of the department of medicine there, she helped
establish a connection between elevated levels of uric acid and the
pain in ankles and wrists experienced by patients.
In their clinical studies, Dr. Yu, Dr. Gutman and others tested a
drug, probenecid, that was shown to remove excess uric acid by
causing it to be excreted in urine. Probenecid proved to be a success
and remains in use as a treatment for gout.
They later conducted a five-year study of an anti-inflammatory drug,
colchicine, and its effects on 208 patients, evaluating its
usefulness in preventing recurring attacks of acute gout. The results
of the study were published in a widely cited paper in the Annals of
Internal Medicine in 1961. Colchicine was also a success and remains
in use.
In the 1960s, Dr. Yu, with Dr. Gutman and others, continued her
pioneering studies of gout's mechanisms and evaluated allopurinol, a
drug that helps interrupt the formation of uric acid and still is
used in treating gout and kidney stones.
Tsai-Fan Yu was born in Shanghai. She received her medical degree
from Peking Union Medical College in 1936.
Dr. Yu arrived in the United States in 1947, after initially studying
diseases in citrus fruits and bacterial blight affecting beans in
China. She taught at Columbia before moving to Mount Sinai as an
associate professor of internal medicine in 1957.
She lived in Manhattan and became an American citizen in the 1950s.
In 1973, she became the first woman to be appointed a full professor
at Mount Sinai, a position she held until retiring in 1992, said Dr.
Paul Klotman, chairman of Mount Sinai's department of medicine.
Dr. Yu is survived by a son, Yu Yu of Manhattan; a brother, Dr.
Jiefei Yu, a surgeon, of Chongqing, China; and a niece, Dr. Hua
Eleanor Yu, a cancer researcher, of Glendora, Calif.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/obituaries/12yu.html?
ex=1331352000&en=228d2f80e83e0515&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
Chase
PS, a great lady, but named her son Yu Yu? That sounds like dirty
work at the baptismal font.