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Sherif R. Zaki (November 24, 1955 – November 21, 2021) was an American pathologist. He was the chief of the Centers for Disease Controlinfectious diseases pathology branch.[1][2] Sometimes called a "disease detective", his career included research on Ebola outbreaks, Zika virus outbreaks, the 2001 anthrax attacks, and leptospirosis.[3]
Personal life
Personal life
Zaki was born in Alexandria, Egypt.[3] He died on November 21, 2021.[1]
References
References
^
a b Roberts, Sam (December 4, 2021). "Dr. Sherif R. Zaki, Acclaimed Disease Detective, Dies at 65" – via NYTimes.com.
^ "Sherif Zaki, CDC pathologist who studied infectious diseases, dies at 65". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
^
a b McCrea Jones, Raymond (February 16, 2016). "CDC's top disease detective is driven by passion for mystery". STAT. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherif_Zaki
2023-06-07-wikipedia-org-sherif-r-zaki.pdf
Sherif Zaki
Sherif Zaki
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sherif R. Zaki (November 24, 1955 – November 21, 2021) was an American pathologist. He was the chief of the Centers for Disease Control infectious diseases pathology branch.[1][2] Sometimes called a "disease detective", his career included research on Ebola outbreaks, Zika virus outbreaks, the 2001 anthrax attacks, Nipah virus, leptospirosis and COVID-19.[3][4]
Zaki was born in Alexandria, Egypt.[3] He graduated from the Alexandria University School of Medicine in 1978.[5] While undergoing an orthopedic medicine residency, he took an interest in pathology and successfully secured a scholarship to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to pursue his PhD. He relocated once again to Emory University to pursue a joint PhD and residency in experimental pathology.[6]
Zaki joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1988.[7] In the early 1990s, Zaki contributed to the discovery that hantaviruses were causing a previously unexplained series of deaths among members of the Navajo Nation.[5] He participated in the processing and identification of the anthrax strain used during the 2001 anthrax attacks.[8][9] During the COVID-19 pandemic, Zaki studied the causes of fatality related to SARS-CoV-2 and the virus' impact on pregnancy.[9]
Zaki died from complications after a fall at his home in Atlanta, Georgia on November 21, 2021.[1][2][7]
^
a b Roberts, Sam (December 4, 2021). "Dr. Sherif R. Zaki, Acclaimed Disease Detective, Dies at 65". New York Times. Archived from the original on April 25, 2023. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
^
a b "Sherif Zaki, CDC pathologist who studied infectious diseases, dies at 65". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
^
a b McCrea Jones, Raymond (February 16, 2016). "CDC's top disease detective is driven by passion for mystery". STAT. Retrieved December 6, 2021.
^ Lo, Michael K.; Feldmann, Friederike; Gary, Joy M.; Jordan, Robert; Bannister, Roy; Cronin, Jacqueline; Patel, Nishi R.; Klena, John D.; Nichol, Stuart T.; Cihlar, Tomas; Zaki, Sherif R.; Feldmann, Heinz; Spiropoulou, Christina F.; de Wit, Emmie (May 29, 2019). "Remdesivir (GS-5734) protects African green monkeys from Nipah virus challenge". Science Translational Medicine. 11 (494). doi:10.1126/scitranslmed.aau9242. ISSN 1946-6234. PMC 6732787. PMID 31142680.
^
a b Watts, Geoff (January 22, 2022). "Sherif Ramzy Zaki". The Lancet. 399 (10322): 354. doi:10.1016/s0140-6736(22)00060-5. ISSN 0140-6736. Archived from the original on June 7, 2023.
^ Woolsey, Mark (November 26, 2021). "CDC loses chief infectious disease expert, Sherif Zaki, to accident". The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. ISSN 1539-7459. Archived from the original on June 7, 2023. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
^
a b "Honoring Sherif Zaki – the Science and the Man | We Were There". Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. April 29, 2022. Archived from the original on June 7, 2023. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
^ Shieh, Wun-Ju; Guarner, Jeannette; Paddock, Christopher; Greer, Patricia; Tatti, Kathleen; Fischer, Marc; Layton, Marci; Philips, Michael; Bresnitz, Eddy; Quinn, Conrad P.; Popovic, Tanja; Perkins, Bradley A.; Zaki, Sherif R. (November 2003). "The Critical Role of Pathology in the Investigation of Bioterrorism-Related Cutaneous Anthrax". The American Journal of Pathology. 163 (5): 1901–1910. doi:10.1016/S0002-9440(10)63548-1. PMC 1892419. PMID 14578189.
^
a b Hodges, Lauren; Intagliata, Christopher (November 30, 2021). "Sherif Zaki, CDC disease detective, is dead at age 65". NPR. Archived from the original on June 7, 2023. Retrieved June 7, 2023.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/04/science/sherif-r-zaki-dead.html
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Dr. Sherif R. Zaki, Acclaimed Disease Detective, Dies at 65
He helped identify numerous viruses, including Covid-19, as well as the bioterrorism attack that spread anthrax in 2001.
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Dr. Sherif R. Zaki in 2006. He was, a colleague said, considered to be “among the most influential infectious disease pathologists of his generation.”
Dr. Sherif R. Zaki in 2006. He was, a colleague said, considered to be “among the most influential infectious disease pathologists of his generation.”Credit...Jessica McGowan for The New York Times
Sam Roberts
By Sam Roberts
Dec. 4, 2021
Dr. Sherif R. Zaki, a pathologist who as America’s chief infectious disease detective helped identify the Covid-19, Ebola, West Nile and Zika viruses and severe acute respiratory syndrome, as well as the bioterrorism attack that spread anthrax in 2001, died on Nov. 21 in Atlanta. He was 65.
His wife, Nadia Zaki, said he died in a hospital from complications of injuries sustained in a fall down a flight of stairs at his home.
Dr. Zaki joined the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 1988 and became chief of the agency’s infectious diseases pathology branch in the early 1990s.
He and his team made strides in distinguishing rare diseases and their mutations and determining what made some of them, like SARS and Ebola, so contagious and lethal. To do so they applied a process called immunohistochemistry, which allows researchers to identify foreign pathogens by staining cells and observing them through electron microscopes capable of magnifying bacteria and viruses 740,000 times.
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“Dr. Zaki was critical in diagnosing unexplained illness and outbreaks that allowed C.D.C. and public health to respond more quickly and save lives,” the agency’s director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, said in a statement.
Dr. Rima Khabbaz, the director of the agency’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said in an email to the C.D.C. staff that Dr. Zaki had widely been considered to be “among the most influential infectious disease pathologists of his generation.” He was also known as a generous mentor and colleague, and as a researcher with a phenomenal memory.
After studying the coronavirus that caused SARS, he presciently told Smithsonian magazine in 2003, “I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t come back.”
Image
An image of the lung tissue pathology of SARS. After studying the coronavirus that caused SARS, Dr. Zaki presciently told Smithsonian magazine in 2003, “I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t come back.”
An image of the lung tissue pathology of SARS. After studying the coronavirus that caused SARS, Dr. Zaki presciently told Smithsonian magazine in 2003, “I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t come back.”Credit...Dr. Sherif Zaki
In 2001, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, Dr. Zaki determined that a number of people who had come into contact with letters containing a white powder had died from anthrax after their skin was exposed to the bacteria, or after inhaling it.
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He and his team helped identify a deadly outbreak of hantavirus in the Navajo Nation in 1993 (that discovery spurred the expansion of the infectious diseases pathology branch); a previously unidentified bacterial illness called leptospirosis in Nicaragua; and the mosquito-borne Zika virus in the brain tissue of babies in Brazil, establishing that it could be transmitted during pregnancy.
Dr. Zaki headed the agency’s Unexplained Deaths Project, a squad of detectives of last resort responsible for delving into the causes of the 700 or so baffling fatalities from disease that occur in the United States every year.
A colleague, Dr. Christopher D. Paddock, recalled Dr. Zaki’s “remarkable patience, perseverance and curiosity,” as well as his “stubborn determination to find the cause of disease, whether it involved one patient or 100 patients — he simply would not give up.”
After four people who received organ transplants in Massachusetts and Rhode Island developed a viral infection and three of them died, Dr. Zaki and his colleagues pinpointed the cause as lymphocytic choriomeningitis, a rare rodent-borne virus. It turned out that the organ donor’s daughter had a pet hamster.
In 2005, a few days after complaining to his pediatrician of a fever, a headache and an itchy scalp, a 10-year-old Mississippi boy became so agitated that he bit a relative. After the boy was hospitalized, tests were inconclusive, but he died two weeks later.
About a week after that, Dr. Zaki’s team detected rabies virus in the boy’s body. They learned from follow-up interviews that dead bats had been discovered in the boy’s home, and that he had found a live bat in his bedroom.
Sherif Ramzy Zaki was born on Nov. 24, 1955, in Alexandria, Egypt. He spent his first six years in Chapel Hill, N.C., where his father, Ramzy Zaki, was attending graduate school. He later lived in the Caribbean, the Middle East and Europe, where his father worked for the United Nations’ International Labor Organization. His mother, Dalal (Elba) Zaki, was a teacher.
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In addition to his wife — Nadia Abougad when they married — he is survived by a daughter, Yasmin; a son, Samy; and two sisters, Dorreya and Safa.
Dr. Zaki graduated second in his class of 800 from the Alexandria Medical School in Egypt in 1978. But he was less interested in practicing medicine than in unraveling mysteries, which had been an obsession of his ever since he was captivated by the novels of the British author Enid Blyton as a child.
That obsession was at the heart of his work at the C.D.C. “We go into the basics of how a disease happens, the mechanism,” he said in an interview with Stat, a medical website, in 2016. “Putting pieces together. Solving puzzles.”
Dr. Zaki earned a master’s in pathology from Alexandria University. But since autopsies were not permitted in Egypt for religious reasons, he did his residency in anatomic pathology at Emory University in Atlanta, where he also received a doctorate in experimental pathology.
He then went to work at the C.D.C. and became a naturalized American citizen.
Described by James LeDuc, a former colleague, as “kind of the secret weapon for a lot of what was done at C.D.C. on emerging diseases,” Dr. Zaki was awarded the Department of Health and Human Services Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service, the department’s highest honor, nine times.
“What distinguished him as a researcher was creativity, collaboration, solid scientific methodology and a broad knowledge base.,” Dr. Inger K. Damon, of the C.D.C.’s National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, said in an email.
Dr. Zaki had no illusions that his work would ever be finished.
“We think we know everything,” he told The New York Times in 2007, “but we don’t know the tip of the iceberg.”
“There are so many viruses and bacteria we don’t know anything about, that we don’t have tests for,” he added. “A hundred years from now, people will not believe the number of pathogens we didn’t even know existed.”
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