Dr. Yoshitsugu Obi has been awarded as a Clinical and Translational Research Scholar by the Mississippi Center for Clinical and Translational Research (MCCTR). The MCCTR is an enterprise designed to successfully address Mississippi’s clinical and translational research needs through its four partner institutions and is funded by a grant through the National Institute of General Medicine Sciences.

Dr. Obi is planning to shed light on sudden cardiac death (SCD) among patients with end-stage kidney disease on dialysis (ESKD). Dialysis patients have extremely high mortality, and their leading cause of death is cardiovascular disease (CVD).  This CVD mortality in ESKD differs from that in the general population in that SCD is the single, largest, specific cause of death among dialysis patients. However, relatively little attention has been paid to understanding its epidemiology, risk factors, and mechanisms. Dr. Obi’s team will better characterize SCD, identify its risk factors, and develop a prediction model for SCD using a large national database. They will also evaluate whether traditional and novel cardiovascular biomarkers improve the performance of the prediction model. Congratulations Dr. Obi!