Janet Rice and Richard Lanese, Public Health

Janet Rice and Richard Lanese (1928-2012), then faculty at the Ohio State School of Preventive Medicine, were part of a team that in 1982 published a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association revealing the connection between Reye’s syndrome and aspirin use in children. Reye’s syndrome is a rare disorder that causes brain and liver damage and usually occurs in children who have had a recent viral infection, such as chickenpox or the flu. This work led to widespread recognition that taking aspirin to treat such an infection greatly increases the risk of Reye’s. The team also included collaborators from the Ohio Department of Health.

-submitted by the College of Public Health