A clinical decision report appraising:
Cappellini MD, Viprakasit V, Taher AT, et al. A phase 3 trial of luspatercept in patients with transfusion-dependent β-thalassemia.
N Engl J Med.
...2020;382(13):1219-1231. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMoa1910182
for a patient with transfusion-dependent beta-thalassemia.
Amalia Voureka was a physician, bacteriologist, and Greek Resistance activist who joined the laboratory of Sir Alexander Fleming in 1946 on a scholarship. She had nine research publications between ...May 1947 and August 1952, four of which were as the single author and three as the first author. Only three were coauthored with Sir Fleming. Her research focus was bacteria and antimicrobial agents. She demonstrated variable endpoints for the bacteriostatic power of streptomycin depending on media used, inoculum size, salt concentration, and atmospheric conditions. She worked on bacterial antibiotic resistance, demonstrating the induction of bacterial variants following chloramphenicol treatment. In another paper, she showed that penicillin‐resistant bacteria can be made sensitive by coculture with other organisms that are either penicillin sensitive or insensitive. In a study of staphylococcal strains from the anterior nares of patients, she documented a low rate of penicillin resistance (7.6%). Elsewhere, she showed that toxin production by staphylococci is important for virulence. She determined that bacterial flagella can be critical for movement and not simply attachments resulting from cell distress. She refined and invented new laboratory techniques, improving on flagellar staining. Dr. Voureka married Sir Fleming in 1953, despite a 31‐year age difference. Her marriage to Sir Fleming was brief (he died of a heart attack in 1955). She later returned to Greece but was exiled and stripped of her citizenship by the military junta for her political activities. After the junta fell, she returned to Greece and was elected to Parliament in 1977, 1981, and 1985. She died in 1986.
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