Prabha Ranganathan, MD, MSCI

Prabha Ranganathan, MD, MSCI, a rheumatologist, is a professor of medicine. She earned her medical degree from the University of Madras in Madras, India, in 1990 and completed her medical training with a residency at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and a rheumatology fellowship at Washington University. She completed a master’s in clinical investigation at Washington University in 2008.

Her clinical practice focuses on the treatment of rheumatic diseases. Her clinical research interests are in the areas of pharmacogenetics, osteoporosis and the effects of vitamin D, as well as outcomes research in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Her research has established that polymorphisms in methotrexate transporter and folate pathway genes are associated with toxicity to methotrexate in patients with RA. The ultimate goal of her research in pharmacogenetics is to help individualize treatment for patients with RA by defining genetic profiles which would predict therapeutic outcomes and avoid toxicities. A second area of her research interest is osteoporosis and the effects of vitamin D in RA. Ranganathan has conducted studies to elucidate the roles of traditional, RA-related, and genetic risk factors for osteoporosis in women with RA and the mechanisms of immune modulation by vitamin D in RA. She has conducted outcomes research in RA as part of a large pharmacovigilance effort, using national Veterans Affairs administrative databases to identify adverse outcomes in veterans with RA treated with disease-modifying agents. An extension of her interest in outcomes research is examining the association between colchicine and all-cause mortality and cardiovascular morbidity in gout.