Katherine Phoenix Liao, MD, MPH

Katherine Liao, MD, MPH

Associate Professor of Medicine, Brigham and Women's Hospital
Associate Professor of Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School (Secondary)

Brigham and Women's Hospital Rheumatology - PBB-B3 75 Francis St Boston, MA

Katherine Liao is a clinical investigator and practicing rheumatologist. The mission of her lab her lab is two-fold: (1) is to study rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and the clinical and genetic factors that lead to outcomes such as cardiovascular disease and severe joint damage, and (2) is to apply and develop bioinformatics methods to utilize big data for clinical and translational research studies. Liao’s research focuses on applying methods such as natural language processing to electronic medical record (EMR) data to perform clinical studies in RA and other conditions. Heart disease is the leading cause of death in patients with RA. This high risk has been attributed to inflammation, which is an important risk factor for heart disease in the general population. Determining these links can identify strategies to reduce CV risk in RA, as well as lead to potential targets of treatment in the general population. Liao is the PI of the R01 funded study, Lipids, Inflammation and CV risk in RA (LiiRA). The goal of LiiRA is to investigate how inflammation may modify important traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as cholesterol and blood pressure, and the impact of these modifications on CV risk. She is also a co-investigator on an NIH U01 multi-center RCT, Treatment Against RA and Effect on FDG PET CT (TARGET). TARGET specifically tests the hypothesis that reducing inflammation, reduces vascular inflammation and CV risk in RA. In line with her research interests, Liao is co-Director of the Cardiovascular Rheumatology Clinic at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Through her work with the Informatics for Integrating Biology and the Bedside (i2b2) project, Liao led the team to develop an EMR research platform for RA studies. This platform integrated clinical and biomarker data (e.g. clinical EMR data, genetics, autoantibody data) allowing for both traditional genetic association studies as well as new approaches for data analyses such as the Phenome Wide Association Study (PheWAS). Using this platform, she collaborates closely with investigators from the fields of biostatistics and bioinformatics to apply novel methods to study focused clinical questions such as CVD in RA. Currently, she is leading a pilot project to port and further develop these methods at VA Boston Healthcare using nationwide VA data with a goal to establish an EMR research platform at the VA.

PheProb: probabilistic phenotyping using diagnosis codes to improve power for genetic association studies.
Authors: Sinnott JA, Cai F, Yu S, Hejblum BP, Hong C, Kohane IS, Liao KP.
J Am Med Inform Assoc
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Semi-supervised Validation of Multiple Surrogate Outcomes with Application to Electronic Medical Records Phenotyping.
Authors: Hong C, Liao KP, Cai T.
Biometrics
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The Association Between Arthralgia and Vedolizumab Using Natural Language Processing.
Authors: Cai T, Lin TC, Bond A, Huang J, Kane-Wanger G, Cagan A, Murphy SN, Ananthakrishnan AN, Liao KP.
Inflamm Bowel Dis
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Association of Interleukin 6 Receptor Variant With Cardiovascular Disease Effects of Interleukin 6 Receptor Blocking Therapy: A Phenome-Wide Association Study.
Authors: Cai T, Zhang Y, Ho YL, Link N, Sun J, Huang J, Cai TA, Damrauer S, Ahuja Y, Honerlaw J, Huang J, Costa L, Schubert P, Hong C, Gagnon D, Sun YV, Gaziano JM, Wilson P, Cho K, Tsao P, O'Donnell CJ, Liao KP.
JAMA Cardiol
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Impact of Changes in Inflammation on Estimated Ten-Year Cardiovascular Risk in Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Authors: Yu Z, Yang N, Everett BM, Frits M, Iannaccone C, Coblyn J, Weinblatt M, Shadick N, Solomon DH, Liao KP.
Arthritis Rheumatol
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Association Between Anti-Citrullinated Fibrinogen Antibodies and Coronary Artery Disease in Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Authors: Hejblum BP, Cui J, Lahey LJ, Cagan A, Sparks JA, Sokolove J, Cai T, Liao KP.
Arthritis Care Res (Hoboken)
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Association between inflammation and systolic blood pressure in RA compared to patients without RA.
Authors: Yu Z, Kim SC, Vanni K, Huang J, Desai R, Murphy SN, Solomon DH, Liao KP.
Arthritis Res Ther
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Pseudogout among Patients Fulfilling a Billing Code Algorithm for Calcium Pyrophosphate Deposition Disease.
Authors: Tedeschi SK, Solomon DH, Liao KP.
Rheumatol Int
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Cardiovascular Safety of Biologics and JAK Inhibitors in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Authors: Kang EH, Liao KP, Kim SC.
Curr Rheumatol Rep
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Lipids in RA: Is Less Not Necessarily More?
Authors: Plutzky J, Liao KP.
Curr Rheumatol Rep
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