As published on www.Page2Go.com
Tsai-Fan Yu, 95, Physician, Dies; Helped Alleviate Gout
By JEREMY PEARCE
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 [2007] in Manhattan
[New York]. 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 [New York]; a brother,
Dr. Jiefei Yu, a surgeon, of Chongqing, China; and a niece, Dr. Hua Eleanor
Yu, a cancer researcher, of Glendora, California.
