Howard Lund Judd (December 28, 1935 - July 19, 2007) is an American physician and medical researcher. She specializes in obstetrics and gynecology, and contributes important research to women's health, especially about menopause and hormone replacement therapy.
Judd was born in Los Angeles. His father, George Judd, was an obstetrician; he himself went on to study medicine at George Washington University after attending Occidental College and Brigham Young University. He completed residency in obstetrics and gynecology at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and was later trained in endocrinology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
In 1970, he joined the medical faculty at the University of California, San Diego, and later in 1977 joined the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). He will remain at the university until his retirement in 2005, and become professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and executive director of the reproductive and infertility endocrinology division.
In the initial study, Judd and his collaborators showed that postmenopausal female ovaries can secrete androgen, which can act as a precursor for estrogen. He then began to investigate the physiology of hot flushes, typical symptoms of menopause. He developed techniques to monitor the onset and severity of hot flushes, using electrodes to measure the rise in skin temperature due to vasodilation, and pulse rate. Objective measurements of these hot flushes are then helpful in assessing the effectiveness of treatments that relieve menopausal signs and symptoms, including hormone replacement therapy. He led the first trial to demonstrate the efficacy and safety of transdermal estrogen patches known as Estraderm.
From the 1990s to 2005 he was the principal investigator for the Women's Health Initiative, an experiment that investigated important health problems in older women, including menopause and hormone replacement therapy. The trial was discontinued in 2002 following results showing that women undergoing hormone replacement therapy had a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease and breast cancer. Dr. Judd argues that estrogen will in fact be beneficial to some people, a position that researchers eventually adopted after further research.
Howard Judd died of congestive heart failure at Santa Monica Home, and survived his wife Susan Judd and his three daughters.
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Source of the article : Wikipedia
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