Description
Prof Michael Eddleston
I am Professor of Clinical Toxicology at the University of Edinburgh, Honorary Consultant Physician and Pharmacologist at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, and Clinical Lead for the UK’s National Poisons Information Service.
I trained in medicine at Cambridge and Oxford, with an intercalated PhD at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla. While a medical student, I became fascinated by self-poisoning in rural Sri Lanka and took a year off to perform a clinical trial in a Sri Lankan hospital and to write the Oxford Handbook of Tropical Medicine. Following basic medical training, I returned to Sri Lanka for four years as a Wellcome Trust career development fellow before moving to Edinburgh to complete specialist medical training. I became a consultant and Senior Clinical Fellow in 2009 and Professor of Clinical Toxicology in 2013; I now lead a research group working to prevent deaths from acute poisoning worldwide while seeing poisoned patients in the specialist toxicology ward of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.
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My research in a nutshell
My work’s major aim is to reduce deaths from acute poisoning worldwide. For many years, my work has focused on preventing deaths from pesticide self-poisoning in rural Asia, a cause of over 100,000 premature deaths each year and a key global means of suicide. To do this, I perform clinical trials in South Asian district hospitals to identify effective antidotes and controlled community-based trials to identify effective public health interventions. This work is complemented by large animal translational studies of antidotes in Edinburgh, work with WHO and FAO to aid implementation, and establishment of the Centre for Pesticide Suicide Prevention to support government regulation of highly hazardous pesticides. I also perform mostly clinical research in Edinburgh and globally to improve treatment of other forms of poisoning, such as from alcohol, methanol and benzodiazepines, by developing better antidotes.
Email eddlestonm@yahoo.com
