Posted on Jun 5, 2012

Congratulations to Dr. Soni Srivastav!  Her poster presentation was awarded 2nd place in the Fellows-In-Training category at the annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists in Philadelphia.  The title of her poster was “Prevalence of Anti-Gad Antibodies in Patients with Pancreatic Diabetes Mellitus”.  Dr. Srivastav and her mentor, Dr. Fernando Ovalle, examined the prevalence of anti-GAD antibodies in patients with diabetes due to pancreatic disease.  Anti-GAD antibodies are often detected in patients with type 1 diabetes, the autoimmune form of diabetes.  Unexpectedly, they discovered that anti-GAD antibodies were detected in 30% of patients with diabetes due to chronic pancreatitis.  The prevalence of anti-GAD antibodies in pancreatic diabetes due to other pancreatic diseases was also higher than expected.  This research suggests that anti-GAD antibodies may not be a specific test for type 1 diabetes.  Dr. Srivastav is a first-year endocrinology fellow.