Julius Schachter, Renowned Chlamydia Researcher, Dies at 84

The UCSF microbiologist pioneered investigations into the deadly disease starting in the late 1960s that have led to the near eradication of trachoma, a chlamydia-related eye infection.

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Julius Schachter, a leading microbiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, died December 20 from COVID-19. He was 84 years old.

“For decades he was the world’s authority on chlamydial diagnostics,” Tom Lietman, the director of the Francis I. Proctor Foundation for Research in Ophthalmology at UCSF and a longtime colleague of Schachter, says in a statement to colleagues shared with The Scientist. “He was also a legend in the sexually transmitted disease world, discovering that various chlamydia species could lead to systemic disease, and running the international chlamydial meetings.”

Trachoma, a chlamydia-related eye infection and one of the world’s leading causes of blindness until the 1990s, was the focus of much of Schachter’s research. In what Lietman calls a “seminal experiment,” Schachter found in 1999 that mass distribution of the oral antibiotic azithromycin was an effective way to treat the disease at a community-wide level in places where ...

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  • Max Kozlov

    Max is a science journalist from Boston. Though he studied cognitive neuroscience, he now prefers to write about brains rather than research them. Prior to writing for The Scientist as an editorial intern in late 2020 and early 2021, Max worked at the Museum of Science in Boston, where his favorite part of the job was dressing in a giant bee costume and teaching children about honeybees. He was also a AAAS Mass Media Fellow, where he worked as a science reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Read more of his work at www.maxkozlov.com.

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