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.

Performance of the Expanded Cardiovascular Risk Prediction Score for Rheumatoid Arthritis in a geographically distant National Register-based cohort: an external validation.
Authors: Ljung L, Ueda P, Liao KP, Greenberg JD, Etzel CJ, Solomon DH, Askling J.
RMD Open
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Enabling phenotypic big data with PheNorm.
Authors: Yu S, Ma Y, Gronsbell J, Cai T, Ananthakrishnan AN, Gainer VS, Churchill SE, Szolovits P, Murphy SN, Kohane IS, Liao KP, Cai T.
J Am Med Inform Assoc
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A phenotyping algorithm to identify acute ischemic stroke accurately from a national biobank: the Million Veteran Program.
Authors: Imran TF, Posner D, Honerlaw J, Vassy JL, Song RJ, Ho YL, Kittner SJ, Liao KP, Cai T, O'Donnell CJ, Djousse L, Gagnon DR, Gaziano JM, Wilson PW, Cho K.
Clin Epidemiol
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Transethnic meta-analysis identifies GSDMA and PRDM1 as susceptibility genes to systemic sclerosis.
Authors: Terao C, Kawaguchi T, Dieude P, Varga J, Kuwana M, Hudson M, Kawaguchi Y, Matucci-Cerinic M, Ohmura K, Riemekasten G, Kawasaki A, Airo P, Horita T, Oka A, Hachulla E, Yoshifuji H, Caramaschi P, Hunzelmann N, Baron M, Atsumi T, Hassoun P, Torii T, Takahashi M, Tabara Y, Shimizu M, Tochimoto A, Ayuzawa N, Yanagida H, Furukawa H, Tohma S, Hasegawa M, Fujimoto M, Ishikawa O, Yamamoto T, Goto D, Asano Y, Jinnin M, Endo H, Takahashi H, Takehara K, Sato S, Ihn H, Raychaudhuri S, Liao K, Gregersen P, Tsuchiya N, Riccieri V, Melchers I, Valentini G, Cauvet A, Martinez M, Mimori T, Matsuda F, Allanore Y.
Ann Rheum Dis
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Through the looking glass of rheumatoid arthritis to study inflammation and high-density lipoprotein.
Authors: Liao KP.
Heart
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Comparison of cardiovascular risk algorithms in patients with vs without rheumatoid arthritis and the role of C-reactive protein in predicting cardiovascular outcomes in rheumatoid arthritis.
Authors: Alemao E, Cawston H, Bourhis F, Al M, Rutten-van Molken M, Liao KP, Solomon DH.
Rheumatology (Oxford)
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Phenome-Wide Association Study of Autoantibodies to Citrullinated and Noncitrullinated Epitopes in Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Authors: Liao KP, Sparks JA, Hejblum BP, Kuo IH, Cui J, Lahey LJ, Cagan A, Gainer VS, Liu W, Cai TT, Sokolove J, Cai T.
Arthritis Rheumatol
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Surrogate-assisted feature extraction for high-throughput phenotyping.
Authors: Yu S, Chakrabortty A, Liao KP, Cai T, Ananthakrishnan AN, Gainer VS, Churchill SE, Szolovits P, Murphy SN, Kohane IS, Cai T.
J Am Med Inform Assoc
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Time-Course of Cause-Specific Hospital Admissions During Snowstorms: An Analysis of Electronic Medical Records From Major Hospitals in Boston, Massachusetts.
Authors: Bobb JF, Ho KK, Yeh RW, Harrington L, Zai A, Liao KP, Dominici F.
Am J Epidemiol
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Cardiovascular disease in patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
Authors: Liao KP.
Trends Cardiovasc Med
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