Rakesh Malhotra
University of California-San Diego, CA·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
People with advanced kidney disease face high risks of hospitalization, heart problems and early death. This research looks for practical ways to protect them.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Public Health & Epidemiology
Physiology
- Topics
chronic kidney disease
hemodialysis
kidney failure
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Feb 2031
What they work on
- Test whether a wearable activity tracker plus weekly personalized text messages increases weekly step count more than a tracker alone in hemodialysis patients, using a 6-month SMART randomized trial.
- Determine whether adding online or in-person coaching helps hemodialysis patients who miss their step goals for four straight weeks, and assess effects on hospitalizations, cardiovascular events, mortality and cost-effectiveness.
- Relate skin microvascular measures from capillaroscopy (capillary density and recruitment) and laser Doppler (heat-induced blood flow) to glomerular scarring in kidney tissue from biopsies and nephrectomies.
- Identify clinical risk factors for skin microvascular dysfunction in 200 people with CKD, and test whether this dysfunction predicts decline in kidney function over time.
- Test whether changes in skin capillary recruitment after a dietary protein load match changes in estimated glomerular filtration rate, a measure of renal functional reserve, in 20 CKD patients.
More about the research
One project tests a phone-and-wearable program to get people on hemodialysis, a blood-filtering treatment for kidney failure, moving more. Another asks whether tiny blood vessels in the skin can reveal what is happening to the kidney's own small vessels without a biopsy. Together, they aim to give doctors simple, non-invasive ways to measure and improve the health of people with chronic kidney disease (CKD).
Why it matters
People on hemodialysis rarely have their activity measured or addressed in routine care. A scalable, adaptive mobile program could raise their activity and may reduce hospitalizations and heart complications. Non-invasive skin vessel tests could help doctors spot CKD patients at risk of losing kidney function without a biopsy. These tests could also be used to track responses to therapy in future clinical trials.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Laura Seewald
University of Michigan, MI·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Adapt SafERteens, a health-coach-delivered ED brief intervention using motivational interviewing and cognitive skill-building, into MiGuide for young adults aged 18–30, refining it step by step with community input.
Jason D Robinson
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, TX·Medicine & Clinical Research
Compare quit rates after six weeks of varenicline versus dual nicotine replacement therapy (patch plus lozenge) among 2,000 Texas smokers in a virtually delivered SMART trial, confirming abstinence by breath carbon monoxide.
Fahad Saeed
University of Rochester, NY·Medicine & Clinical Research
Determine whether the CKD-EDU palliative care intervention, a decision aid plus palliative clinician coaching, reduces decisional conflict at one month in patients aged 75 or older with advanced CKD.
The school
University of California-San Diego: 84 labs on PI Pages, $1.9B a year on research, 637 research doctorates a year.
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