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It is no mystery why Alka Kanaya, M.D., decided to point her research lens in the direction she did nearly a decade ago. Born in Mumbai and raised in California, Kanaya had seen firsthand the devastating toll heart disease and stroke were taking on family members, friends, and others in her community. Many were dying at relatively young ages, but there was little that explained why. “South Asians, who are almost 20 to 25 percent of the world's population, have high rates of cardiovascular disease, but few studies have focused on determining the risk factors for this population,” said Kanaya, a professor of medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF). So Kanaya decided to do something about it. In 2010 she launched the Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America (MASALA) Study, the first long-term study that aims to better understand the factors leading to heart disease in South Asians in the United States and guide prevention and treatment. Since the study began, it has enrolled more than 1,150 South Asian immigrants living in the San Francisco Bay Area and greater Chicago area, most of whom have spent decades in the United States. A key finding of the MASALA study was that South Asians have a tendency to store body fat near organs, raising the risk of diabetes and heart disease, even for people at low body weights. The importance of the MASALA study was highlighted when the American Heart Association’s latest cholesterol guidelines cited its data as the basis for identifying South Asians as a high-risk group that should be carefully considered for statin treatment. Kanaya, who graduated from the UCSF Medical School in 1995, is an expert in type 2 diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular disease. She earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from the University of California, Davis in 1990.
Learn more about Alka Kanaya, M.D.
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The Mediators of Atherosclerosis in South Asians Living in America (MASALA) Study
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