Request for Funding

Medical Student Research Fellowship for Summer 2002

Mentor: William M. Lee, MD
Department: Internal Medicine, Digestive and Liver Diseases
Room number: F4.302
Mail Code: 9151
Phone number: 83323
E-mail: William.Lee@UTSouthwestern.edu
Project title: Natural History of Hepatitis C

Human subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable): Pending

Animal subjects IRB approved project number (where applicable): NA

Project Type (patient-based research, chart review

Brief Description of Project: A previous student, in 2000, reviewed medical records from a hepatitis database developed by the Liver Center in 1994. Questionnaires were sent out at that time to more than 300 individuals to assess their current health status. Unfortunately, due to time limitations and delays in the return of the questionnaires, the data generated by the questionnaires has not been analyzed. Review and tabulation of the questionnaires and further follow-up of the patients as to their current status would provide a unique insight as to what happens to patients with hepatitis B and C over time in the metroplex. There is extensive data from Europe, but very little from the US. How many have died, how many have been transplanted, how many are alive and asymptomatic or have developed complications of their liver disease?

A corollary project is to obtain current serum samples to study genomic drift in the HCV RNA of these same patients. An extensive serum bank which parallels the data bank is available. The hepatitis C virus rapidly mutates leading to genetic drift as a result of immune pressure. The more the host tries to develop an immune response (neutralizing antibody formation), the more the virus is capable of change. This has not been analyzed over longer time intervals (>2 yrs) such as those represented by the current patient group. Sequencing would be performed in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Gale. Insights as to the role of genetic drift would depend on combining the genetic information with that obtained from the medical records: how much treatment had been received, how much progression of liver disease has occurred, is there a correlation between the rate of progression and the genetic diversity observed?

Previous Research Activities or Publications with Medical Students:

I have sponsored/mentored four summer medical students, three in laboratory research related to actin-scavenging proteins, generating three research papers, as well as the one student who began the Questionnaire study described above. Eric Suhler, UTSW '96, won the Basic Science Prize for his oral presentation at the National Medical Student Association competition in Galveston in 1996which was based on his summer research and was published in Critical Care Medicine. Eric also took home the TMA Student Research Award in Austin in the same year for his poster on the same subject.

Suhler E, Lin W, Yin H, Lee WM. Decreased plasma gelsolin levels in acute liver failure, myocardial infarction, septic shock and myonecrosis. Crit Care Med 25:594-8, 1997.

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