J. Michael Gaziano MD
Adjunct Professor, Cardiovascular Medicine
72 E. Concord Street michael.gaziano@va.gov
Sections
Cardiovascular Medicine
Biography
Dr. Michael J. Gaziano, MD, MPH is an internationally recognized chronic disease epidemiologist and trialist. He received his MD from Yale Medical School and his MPH from the Harvard School of Public Health.
At the VA Boston Healthcare System, he is one of the Director the Massachusetts Veterans Epidemiology Research and Information Center (MAVERIC), a national epidemiology and trial center funded by CSR&D where he directs the epidemiology research center. He is national PI for the Million Veteran Program (MVP), a large project designed to enroll a million veterans into a large observational cohort with stored biospecimens. He also serves as the director of the Boston Geriatric Research and Education Center (GRECC). At VA Boston he runs a preventive cardiology program with an associated fellowship. He is the Chief of the Division of Aging at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he is principal investigator for the ongoing Physicians' Health Study (PHS) II study, a large-scale trial of vitamins in the prevention of chronic disease. The Physicians’ Health Study cohort is comprised of 29,000 physicians who have been followed for up to 28 years. He is a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School.
Dr. Gaziano’s research interests include the epidemiology of chronic diseases, with a particular interest in the roles that individual lifestyle choices (diet, exercise, smoking), metabolic factors (obesity, high cholesterol, and hypertension), and biochemical and genetic markers play on the risk of coronary artery disease and stroke. Also of interest is the impact that vascular disease has on other organ systems. Recently, Dr. Gaziano has initiated a number of research projects to investigate the diverse nature of atherosclerosis. While atherosclerosis plaques form only in certain large and medium-sized vessels, the process of atherogenesis affects arteries of all sizes. For example, renal dysfunction, cognitive decline and osteoporosis-related fractures have been linked to various cardiovascular disease risk factors, suggesting a role for small vessel disease in vascular dementia, in abnormal bone remodeling and chronic renal disease. These projects are intended to explore the extent to which atherosclerotic disease in small vessels leads to these and other chronic conditions.
He has published over 350 original reports, reviews, book chapters, and books. He teaches advanced epidemiology and has mentored over 50 trainees. He is a contributing editor for JAMA.
Websites
Education
MD, Yale University School of Medicine
MPH, Harvard School of Public Health
BA, West Virginia University
Publications
Larsen JR, Zheng C, La J, Wu JT, Kelley M, Gaziano JM, Brophy M, Do NV, Kim DH, Driver JA, DuMontier C, Fillmore NR. Multimorbidity and Its Impact in Older U.S. Veterans Newly Treated for Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer. Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2025 Apr; 22(4):598-608. PMID: 39680869.
Published on 2/8/2025Nguyen XT, Li Y, Nyaeme MS, Panigrahy N, Houghton S, Ivey KL, Shiekh S, Willett WC, Hu FB, Gaziano JM, Wilson PWF, Cho K, Djousse L. Dietary Cholesterol and Myocardial Infarction in the Million Veteran Program. J Am Heart Assoc. 2025 Feb 18; 14(4):e036819. PMID: 39921525.
Published on 2/6/2025Rasooly D, Giambartolomei C, Peloso GM, Dashti H, Ferolito BR, Golden D, Horimoto ARVR, Pietzner M, Farber-Eger EH, Wells QS, Bini G, Proietti G, Tartaglia GG, Kosik NM, Wilson PWF, Phillips LS, Munroe PB, Petersen SE, Cho K, Gaziano JM, Leach AR, Whittaker J, Langenberg C, Aung N, Sun YV, Pereira AC, Casas JP, Joseph J. Large-scale multi-omics identifies drug targets for heart failure with reduced and preserved ejection fraction. Nat Cardiovasc Res. 2025 Feb 06. PMID: 39915329.
Published on 2/5/2025Li Y, Nguyen XT, Treu T, Wang DD, Ho YL, Houghton SC, Charest B, Li R, Posner D, Pyatt M, Rahafrooz M, Raghavan S, Gagnon DR, Whitbourne SB, Gaziano JM, Djousse L, Joseph J, Wilson PWF, Cho K. Association of Life's Essential 8 With Incident Heart Failure and Its Prognosis. J Card Fail. 2025 Mar; 31(3):598-602. PMID: 39920917.
Published on 2/1/2025Rahafrooz M, Elbers DC, Gopal JR, Ren J, Chan NH, Yildirim C, Desai AS, Santos AA, Murray K, Havighurst T, Udell JA, Farkouh ME, Cooper L, Gaziano JM, Vardeny O, Mao L, Kim K, Gagnon DR, Solomon SD, Joseph J. Effectiveness of electronic medical record-based strategies for death and hospital admission endpoint capture in pragmatic clinical trials. J Am Med Inform Assoc. 2025 Feb 01; 32(2):349-356. PMID: 39671451.
Published on 1/27/2025Clarke SL, Huang RDL, Hilliard AT, Levin MG, Sharma D, Thomson B, Lynch J, Tsao PS, Gaziano JM, Assimes TL. Genetically predicted lipoprotein(a) associates with coronary artery plaque severity independent of low-density lipoprotein cholesterol. Eur J Prev Cardiol. 2025 Jan 27; 32(2):116-127. PMID: 39158116.
Published on 1/26/2025Djousse L, Zhou X, Lim J, Kim E, Sesso HD, Lee IM, Buring JE, McClelland RL, Gaziano JM, Steffen LM, Manson JE. Potato Consumption and Risk of Cardiovascular Disease in a Harmonized Analysis of Seven Prospective Cohorts. Nutrients. 2025 Jan 26; 17(3). PMID: 39940309.
Published on 1/25/2025Dornisch AM, Xu GJ, Karunamuni R, Brunette CA, Danowski ME, Teerlink CC, Gaziano JM, Garraway IP, Hauger RL, Kibel AS, Lynch JA, Maxwell KN, Rose BS, Andreassen OA, Dale AM, Donovan JL, Hamdy F, Lane A, Mills IG, Martin RM, Neal DE, Turner EL, Wolk A, Vassy JL, Seibert T. Specificity of a polygenic score for aggressive prostate cancer. medRxiv. 2025 Jan 25. PMID: 39974097.
Published on 1/2/2025Wen J, Xue H, Rush E, Panickan VA, Cai T, Zhou D, Ho YL, Costa L, Begoli E, Hong C, Gaziano JM, Cho K, Liao KP, Lu J, Cai T. DOME: Directional medical embedding vectors from Electronic Health Records. J Biomed Inform. 2025 Feb; 162:104768. PMID: 39755324.
Published on 1/2/2025Weng LC, Rämö JT, Jurgens SJ, Khurshid S, Chaffin M, Hall AW, Morrill VN, Wang X, Nauffal V, Sun YV, Beer D, Lee S, Nadkarni GN, Duong T, Wang B, Czuba T, Austin TR, Yoneda ZT, Friedman DJ, Clayton A, Hyman MC, Judy RL, Skanes AC, Orland KM, Treu TM, Oetjens MT, Alonso A, Soliman EZ, Lin H, Lunetta KL, van der Pals J, Issa TZ, Nafissi NA, May HT, Leong-Sit P, Roselli C, Choi SH, Khan HR, Knight S, Karlsson Linnér R, Bezzina CR, Ripatti S, Heckbert SR, Gaziano JM, Loos RJF, Psaty BM, Smith JG, Benjamin EJ, Arking DE, Rader DJ, Shah SH, Roden DM, Damrauer SM, Eckhardt LL, Roberts JD, Cutler MJ, Shoemaker MB, Haggerty CM, Cho K, Palotie A, Wilson PWF, Ellinor PT, Lubitz SA. The impact of common and rare genetic variants on bradyarrhythmia development. Nat Genet. 2025 Jan; 57(1):53-64. PMID: 39747593.