Isabelle Johansson
The future of health research is in good hands – as evidenced by PHRI’s Research Fellows.
Isabelle Johansson, Research Fellow at PHRI for the past two years, returns this summer to her native Sweden to finish her residency in family medicine and continue her research in heart failure, diabetes and CVD prevention. Isabelle used her time with us well, despite the challenges of the pandemic hitting at the start of her fellowship, and will continue to collaborate with PHRI once returned to Sweden.
At PHRI since 2019, Isabelle’s mentor was Salim Yusuf, with whom Isabelle works on the G-CHF registry and the PURE study, specifically in heart failure development. She was first author of a paper on the impact of health related quality of life on clinical outcomes using data from the G-CHF study, published last month in Circulation.
She was the local Principal Investigator of a small retrospective study investigating the implications of poor anticoagulation control in patients with mechanical heart valves (MHV study, NIF-funded), a retrospective chart review of patients followed at the Hamilton General Hospital’s thrombosis clinic, working with co-PI Alexander Benz, and senior researchers Stuart Connolly, John Eikelboom and Sam Schulman.
Isabelle was joint first author with Alex Benz (a former PHRI Research Fellow and now a PHRI International Fellow in his native Germany) of a systematic review of the effect of antiplatelet therapy on major events in patients with atrial fibrillation, recently presented abstract at the EHRA 2021 and manuscript just accepted for publication in European Heart Journal – Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy.
A graduate of the World Heart Federation Salim Yusuf Emerging Leaders program in 2019, Isabelle is interviewed in this video by PHRI Scientist Darryl Leong (an earlier WHF grad) about her time as a Research Fellow with PHRI (during which she earned a Masters in Health Research Methodology, clinical epidemiology, at McMaster).
Another Research Fellow to watch
Sukrit Narula
Sukrit Narula, a second-year Research Fellow at PHRI, was recognized this year with the McMaster Faculty of Health Sciences Graduate Programs’ Outstanding Achievement Award for his PhD work in Health Research Methods at McMaster.
At PHRI, Sukrit has worked under the supervision of Guillaume Paré in the genetic and molecular epidemiology laboratory, and has worked closely with Salim Yusuf as a member of the PURE study team.
Early this year, Sukrit was first author on an important paper, published in The Lancet, about the circulating ACE2 enzyme and its role as a marker of risk of death and cardiometabolic diseases. His work was the first published use of the newly developed PURE genomic and protein biobank.
Sukrit has also been instrumental in helping to organize the Early Career Rounds that happen every two weeks within PHRI to share the knowledge, show support and build the presentation skills of our Fellows and Investigators.
Although he’s just returned to New York City to finish his medical degree at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, Sukrit will continue as a PHRI Research Fellow.
We will miss Sukrit and Isabelle in our midst when PHRI’s home base in Hamilton, Canada re-opens, but know we will see them again as their stellar work with us continues!
