Catherine Fabricant, 81; Studied Viruses, Heart

Catherine G. Fabricant, one of the first researchers to find a link between herpes infections and coronary artery disease, died Sept. 13 in Ithaca, N.Y. She was 81 and died of kidney failure.

Although not the first to suggest the importance of viruses in atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, Fabricant was crucial in opening what is now a thriving field of scientific inquiry.

“She was very much a trailblazer in the role viruses can play in atherosclerosis,” said David P. Hajjar, a professor of biochemistry and dean of the Cornell University Graduate School of Medical Sciences.

For Fabricant, it was a struggle to gain serious attention for her theory, for several reasons. She was a woman toiling in a field still dominated, in the 1970s, by men.

She lacked a doctorate. The most fashionable theory at the time centered on cholesterol as the prime culprit in atherosclerosis. And, her specialty was bird, not human, disease.

Fabricant was a leading expert in viral diseases of birds at Cornell University’s College of Veterinary Medicine. In the late 1960s she isolated a herpes virus in cats that caused a urinary obstruction and, in cell culture, produced unusual crystals. She later identified the crystals as cholesterol.

Aware of cholesterol’s importance in heart disease, she began to wonder whether herpes was also a contributing factor.

With her husband Julius, a microbiologist and avian disease expert at Cornell, she began a series of experiments on chickens. They found that chickens that were fed a cholesterol-free diet but were infected with a herpes virus developed arterial lesions at a much higher rate than those that were not infected. They also found that the lesions were similar to those found in humans with heart disease.

The findings were published in the journal Science in 1973, but they aroused little interest.

“People with little or no knowledge of virology did not want to give up pet theories, especially not to a veterinary medical researcher, and especially not to a woman,” she said in a 1997 Cornell newsletter.

She and her husband presented their findings at conferences, but “people would pooh-pooh it,” Hajjar said. “Cholesterol was the main character. No one was studying other risk factors.”

Fabricant’s views on the relationship between herpes and heart disease did not begin to receive serious attention until Hajjar and another Cornell colleague, C. Richard Minick, provided independent verification in their own studies.

Fabricant eventually showed that chickens could be immunized against herpes to prevent arterial lesions and tumors. She believed that a vaccine against the cytomegalovirus in humans was also possible.

The connection between herpes and atherosclerosis is now the subject of international symposiums, such as one held in Washington two years ago that attracted 200 researchers.

Scientists involved in ongoing studies now believe that herpes does not cause atherosclerosis but exacerbates it by activating receptors in vessel walls where cholesterol accumulates. Much of the current work focuses on a common herpes strain carried by the cytomegalovirus.

Coronary disease is generally thought to result from a combination of factors, including diet, genetic traits, lack of exercise and infection.

Born in Davoli, Italy, Fabricant came to the United States with her parents as an infant. She attended the College of Agriculture at Cornell, where she published her first scientific paper as an undergraduate and earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in bacteriology.

She joined the Cornell faculty as an acting assistant professor in 1963. She was a senior research associate from 1973 to 1985.

In addition to her husband, she is survived by a daughter, Barbara, of New Albany, Ind.; a son, Daniel, of Melrose, Mass.; and two sisters.