%0 Journal Article
%T The 2011 Medical Molecular Hydrogen Symposium: An inaugural symposium of the journal Medical Gas Research
%A Shigeo Ohta
%A Atsunori Nakao
%A Kinji Ohno
%J Medical Gas Research
%D 2011
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/2045-9912-1-10
%X Novel medical gases are expected to provide us with more effective therapeutic interventions and preventive medicine. In the past decades, there has been extraordinary, rapid growth in our knowledge of gaseous molecules, including nitric oxide, carbon monoxide, and hydrogen sulfide, which have been known to play important roles in biological systems. Additionally, since Dr. Shigeo Ohta's group's pioneering paper was published in the June 2007 Nature Medicine showing the potency of hydrogen as a therapeutic gas for oxidative stress-mediated diseases including cerebral infarction [1], basic and clinical hydrogen research has resurfaced. In Japan, the birthplace of hydrogen gas research, Dr. Ohta (Nippon Medical School), who is currently serving as an Associate Editor of Medical Gas Research, organized annual "Medical Molecular Hydrogen Research Meetings" in 2009 and 2010 to provide investigators with focused opportunities to share their rapid scientific progress. Most recently, we organized the Medical Molecular Hydrogen Symposium on February 18-19, 2011 at the Nagoya University Hall (Figure 1). The latest meeting is a "kick-off" inaugural meeting for the newly launched journal Medical Gas Research (MGR), which aims to promote the exchange and dissemination of the latest scientific findings.This report summarizes a brief description/history of the Hydrogen Research Meetings as well as key presentations/oral abstracts delivered in the most recent symposium.The first scientific meeting organized by Dr. Ohta was held on February 7, 2009 in Tokyo. 42 scientists and clinicians from 30 individual institutes were invited. The aim of the meeting was to unite innovative investigators to discuss and propagate medical hydrogen research. Dr. Ohta delivered the keynote presentation, in which he gave a brief history of hydrogen medicine and emphasized the huge impact of his report published in Nature Medicine. He pointed out the great interest in the field, expressed in more than 3
%U http://www.medicalgasresearch.com/content/1/1/10