Stickler, Gunnar B. (1925–)

German physician Gunnar B. Stickler, after immigrating to the United States and beginning work at the Mayo Clinic, identified a genetic pattern behind a series of symptoms. This genetic disorder affects the body's collagen and connective tissue, most often at the bone end [Page 1613]of joints, and in the sclera, cornea, and vitreous humor of the eye. It is now called Stickler syndrome.

Stickler attended the Wilhelmsgymnasium, located in Munich, as well as universities in Erlangen and Munich; he graduated with a degree in medicine from Munich in 1949. Immigrating to the United States in 1951, Stickler worked in the Mayo Clinic and at the University of Minnesota, specializing in pediatrics.

In 1960, Stickler examined a 12-year-old boy with enlarged joints and shortsightedness; his mother was completely blind and others in the family had similar symptoms. Studying this family's history, first recorded by Charles Mayo in 1887, Stickler and his colleagues identified a genetic-based disease they called arthroophthalmopathy; it has since been renamed Stickler syndrome.

Stickler syndrome affects males and females alike, and it is generally passed from parent to child. In rare instances, a child will have the syndrome even though a parent does not. Children with the syndrome often have somewhat flattened facial features, but this tends to diminish with age. Hearing loss, though, tends to increase. Some children also have mitral valve prolapse, wherein one of their heart valves does not close properly. As yet, there is no cure for the syndrome, although certain symptoms can be treated.

In 1973, Stickler was named chairman of pediatrics of the Mayo Medical School. In 1990, Stickler was quoted as blaming the media for the oversensationalizing of diseases to the degree that parents worry too much about rare problems.

For example, 50 percent of parents surveyed worried about their children getting cancer while, in fact, only three children under the age of 15 out of every 100,000 actually die from the disease. Seventy-two percent of parents fear kidnapping from a nonfamily member, a crime that occurs to 1.5 children out of every 1 million. Other diseases that receive significantly more attention that reality warrants, according to Stickler's research, include Lyme disease and Reyes syndrome.