Alka M. Kanaya, MD

Assistant Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology and Biostatistics,
UCSF

Alka M. Kanaya, MD performs patient-oriented translational clinical research with a focus in adipocyte biology and its link to type 2 diabetes and the metabolic syndrome. She investigates novel proteins produced by fat cells, called “adipocytokines”, to determine their association with future type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease risk. Her on-going research projects include several secondary data analyses from large cohort studies or clinical trials in which she has added adipocytokine measures to analyze associations with disease outcomes. She has also added oxidative stress measures to a large existing cohort to examine associations with these measures and adipocytokines on diabetes incidence. She has created a new South Asian cohort (called the MASALA study) that is parallel in design to the ongoing Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis to examine the prevalence and associations between metabolic risk factors and atherosclerosis in this high risk ethnic group. She plans to expand this cohort to follow prospectively to determine future risk of clinical cardiovascular outcomes. Besides testing new biomarkers in cohort studies, Dr. Kanaya is interested in testing novel interventions to delay or prevent type 2 diabetes in high-risk populations. She serves as co-PI on a project translating the Diabetes Prevention Program into at-risk low socioeconomic ethnic minority communities in the East Bay. Dr. Kanaya has completed a pilot study of Restorative yoga among overweight and underactive adults with the metabolic syndrome. She has proposed a multicenter randomized controlled trial of Restorative yoga to treat metabolic risk factors in overweight adults.

Contact Information

University of California, San Francisco
San Francisco, CA 94143-1732
Campus Box 1732 , MZ536

Ph1: 415-353-7919
Ph2: 415-353-9753
Fax: 415-353-7932
Email: Alka.Kanaya@ucsf.edu