Sanjay R. Patel MD, MS
The winner of the 2008 James B. Skatrud New Investigator Award is Sanjay R. Patel MD, MS. Dr. Patel is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Medical School. He completed internal medicine residency at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania followed by fellowship training in pulmonary and critical care medicine at Harvard. He went on to complete a sleep medicine fellowship at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston MA, during which time he also obtained a Master’s degree in epidemiology from the Harvard School of Public Health. Since October 2005, he has been an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland OH.
Dr. Patel’s research focuses on the interaction between sleep and metabolic disorders. He has worked with the Nurses Health Study to identify sleep duration as an independent risk factor for diabetes and obesity as well as all-cause mortality. He has also studied the inter-relationships between sleep disordered breathing, obesity, and insulin resistance and in particular, has worked to define the role of genetics on these associations. Besides identifying polymorphisms that predispose to the development of sleep apnea, Dr. Patel has been interested in defining the genetic basis for susceptibility to sleep apnea consequences. He is principal investigator on a K08 grant aimed at identifying susceptibility genes for diabetes and obesity in a sleep apneic population. Most recently, he has received funding from the ATS to study the effects of sleep apnea and its treatment on gene expression in adipose tissue. With these efforts, Dr. Patel has authored over 30 peer-reviewed papers.
