Hemolytic uremic syndrome

History

The discovery that endothelial cell injury underlies this broad spectrum of TMA disorders has come into focus during the last two decades. In the 1980s, Mohamed Karmali (1945–2016) was the first to make the association between Stx, diarrheal E. coli infection and the (then considered) idiopathic hemolytic uremic syndrome of infancy and childhood. Karmali's work showed that the hemolytic uremic syndrome the children in Canada was caused by this particular bacteria. Karmali also developed the system of classifying strains of E.coli and determining which cause disease in humans. He defined the presence of microvascular injury in diarrhea-associated HUS and the critical role of a verotoxin produced by specific strains of Escherichia coli.