Professor of Medicine (Digestive Diseases); Director of Yale Weight Loss Program
Field:
Expertise:
Obesity, endocrinology, inflammation, liver disease
Description:
In the liver a number of clinically important conditions have a significant sterile inflammatory component. These include drug induced liver injury, alcoholic, and non-alcoholic liver disease. We have recently identified a two signals pathway consisting of activation of TLR9 by DNA from apoptotic self cells, and also activation of the inflammasome pathway. In addition we have found that the cheap and safe anti-inflammatory drug aspirin can inhibit the TLR9 mediated pathway.