Dr. Nathan Boggs, Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and TMS Have a Visit

By Dr. Shonna Snyder

While I was in Bethesda, MD visiting my own doctors at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center, I was able to sneak away across the street for a few hours to visit Dr. Boggs at his practice in the allergy service of Walter Reed National Military Medical Center located on the same campus as the Uniformed Services University (USU).

Walter Reed is widely known for treating Presidents and combat-wounded service members, but the facility also serves a much broader population — military personnel and their families who rely on it for every day, routine medical care. This is a part that Dr. Boggs and his colleagues play every day in keeping our country safe and healthy.

The Walter Reed allergy team sees both adult and pediatric patients with mast cell disease on a pediatric outpatient wing of the medical center. Walter Reed is a site for several actively enrolling interventional clinical trials for patients with systemic mastocytosis. The team is also leading mast cell disease non-interventional prospective research studies at sites across the country. They have a lab at the USU where they perform research and store samples.

I was able to meet with the entire mast cell disease team while I was there. In addition to Dr. Boggs, I was able to meet Dr. Jeremy McMurray, Dr. Brandon Schornack, and Nurse Manager Erryne Enriquez. The comradery within the team is evident and they have a great team mindset. It is great to see a small but mighty team doing great things for mast cell disease patients and research.

Dr. Boggs and the team are specifically interested in improving screening and diagnostic testing algorithms for mastocytosis, reducing diagnostic delays, and bringing novel treatments to patients with all types of mastocytosis. This is meaningful progress for the mast cell disease community — work that has the potential to sharpen how the disease is identified and expand the treatment options available to patients.

After visiting the team and the lab, Dr. Boggs took me on a quick tour to see a few historical locations on base. We saw the small museum that had pictures of the old Walter Reed in Washington DC that was built in the 1800s, President Roosevelt’s dedication of the original Naval hospital facility in Bethesda, MD during World War II, and wounded soldiers in a patient ward from the same time period in the 1940s.

In all, it was a great visit to one of our Mast Cell Disease Centers of Excellence, and I thank Dr. Boggs and his team for their hospitality.