J. Michael Gaziano MD

Adjunct Professor, Cardiovascular Medicine

72 E. Concord Street
J. Michael Gaziano
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.

Education

MD, Yale University School of Medicine

MPH, Harvard School of Public Health

BA, West Virginia University

Publications

Published on 2/1/2025

Rahafrooz 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 1/2/2025

Wen 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 Jan 02; 162:104768. PMID: 39755324.

Published on 1/2/2025

Weng 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 02. PMID: 39747593.

Published on 12/16/2024

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 United States Veterans Newly Treated for Advanced Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer. Ann Am Thorac Soc. 2024 Dec 16. PMID: 39680869.

Published on 12/2/2024

Nguyen XT, Li Y, Gong Y, Houghton S, Ho YL, Pyatt M, Treu T, Li R, Akinosho K, Raghavan S, Gagnon DR, Gaziano JM, Wilson PWF, Cho K. Cardiovascular Health Score and Atherosclerotic Cardiovascular Disease in the Million Veteran Program. JAMA Netw Open. 2024 Dec 02; 7(12):e2447902. PMID: 39641929.

Published on 12/2/2024

Gorman BR, Voloudakis G, Igo RP, Kinzy T, Halladay CW, Bigdeli TB, Zeng B, Venkatesh S, Cooke Bailey JN, Crawford DC, Markianos K, Dong F, Schreiner PA, Zhang W, Hadi T, Anger MD, Stockwell A, Melles RB, Yin J, Choquet H, Kaye R, Patasova K, Patel PJ, Yaspan BL, Jorgenson E, Hysi PG, Lotery AJ, Gaziano JM, Tsao PS, Fliesler SJ, Sullivan JM, Greenberg PB, Wu WC, Assimes TL, Pyarajan S, Roussos P, Peachey NS, Iyengar SK. Genome-wide association analyses identify distinct genetic architectures for age-related macular degeneration across ancestries. Nat Genet. 2024 Dec; 56(12):2659-2671. PMID: 39623103.

Published on 11/15/2024

Wang L, Cook NR, Manson JE, Gaziano JM, Buring JE, Sesso HD. Associations of Vitamin D-Related Biomarkers With Hypertension and the Renin-Angiotensin System in Men and Women. Am J Hypertens. 2024 Nov 15; 37(12):953-961. PMID: 39120701.

Published on 10/25/2024

Steele L, Quaden R, Ahmed ST, Harrington KM, Duong LM, Ko J, Gifford EJ, Polimanti R, Gaziano JM, Aslan M, Helmer DA, Hauser ER. Association of deployment characteristics and exposures with persistent ill health among 1990-1991 Gulf War veterans in the VA Million Veteran Program. Environ Health. 2024 Oct 25; 23(1):92. PMID: 39456027.

Published on 10/23/2024

Sordillo JE, Dey A, Ho YL, Kosik N, Harrington K, Costa L, Muralidhar S, Hauser E, Gaziano JM, Cho K, Whitbourne S. Military and occupational exposures among Veterans in the Million Veteran Program by survey self-report: a descriptive study. Occup Environ Med. 2024 Oct 23; 81(10):522-528. PMID: 39327043.

Published on 10/8/2024

Christopher CN, Chandler PD, Zhang X, Tobias DK, Hazra A, Gaziano JM, Buring JE, Lee IM, Sesso HD. Physical activity before and after cancer diagnosis and mortality risk in three large prospective cohorts. Cancer Causes Control. 2025 Jan; 36(1):81-91. PMID: 39377971.

View full list of 753 publications.