The annual Celebration of Research at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System took place this month during the Department of Veteran’s Affairs Research Week. Highlights included the presentation of the 2018 Larry Searle Lifetime Achievement Award to Murray Raskind, MD, and the 2018 Paul B. Magnuson Award Recipient to Elaine Peskind, MD.
Dr. Raskind, Director of the VA Northwest Network Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center (MIRECC), began his research career looking at brain noradrenergic abnormalities in aging and Alzheimer’s disease. His focus broadened to military PTSD after assuming directorship of the VA Puget Sound Health Care System Mental Health Service in 1994. Dr. Raskind’s search for better treatments for military PTSD began with his clinical experience as medical advisor to the VA Puget Sound African American Veterans Stress Disorders Program beginning in 1995 (a role he continues to the present). The most common and distressing symptoms reported by these Vietnam combat Veterans with chronic PTSD were terrifying combat reenactment nightmares and daytime irritability, hypervigilance and unpredictable anger outbursts that remained decades after the Veterans had returned from war.
Dr. Raskind began investigating whether Prazosin, an inexpensive norepinephrine “blocker” drug introduced to treat hypertension in 1973, could alleviate Veterans’ previously treatment-resistant PTSD symptoms by normalizing the “adrenaline-like” stress chemical, norepinephrine. He and his colleagues completed three positive randomized controlled trials of prazosin for PTSD in Vietnam Veterans at VA Puget Sound and in active duty soldiers at Joint Base Lewis McChord who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan combat deployments (study performed by VA and Army personnel on site at JBLM). This active duty soldier MIRECC study was the first ever performed for any behavioral disorder in active duty combat experienced service members, and a pioneering example of VA/DoD collaboration.
Dr. Peskind was recognized for her extensive work on brain and behavioral disorders. Throughout her 35-year career, she has studied a wide range of conditions that affect the brain including Alzheimer’s disease, PTSD related to combat injuries, and repetitive blast concussion mild traumatic brain injury. She is a prolific investigator, having published more than 340 studies. Since 1998, her work has been continuously funded by either the VA or the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Peskind has been Co-Director of the VA Northwest Mental Illness Research, Education, and Clinical Center (MIRECC) at the VA Puget Sound Health Care System in Washington since 1997. She holds the Friends of Alzheimer’s Research Endowed Professorship and was the Associate Director of the University’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center from 1998–2016.
