Physician receives research award

Dr. Laura Barber

GREENVILLE, N.C.   —   Dr. Laura Barber, a physician and fellow of pulmonary and critical care medicine at the Brody School of Medicine at East Carolina University, received the Young Investigator Award for her research presentation at Chest 2010, the annual meeting of chest physicians held Oct. 30-Nov. 4 in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Barber’s research focused on the pulmonary disease sarcoidosis. The study, performed under the mentorship of Dr. Sergio Arce, an assistant professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at ECU, was published Nov. 1 in the online version Chest, the journal of the American College of Chest Physicians.

Her research found that sarcoidosis patients with reduced levels of a protein called p65 also had more severe disease, responded poorly to steroid therapy and had frequent multi-organ illness. Thus, the research team proposes measuring the levels of p65 protein in sarcoid T-cells to help identify patients likely to develop more active or severe disease and who will likely respond poorly to steroid therapy. Identifying these patients will help prevent steroid toxicity and begin alternative therapies earlier.

Barber is a graduate of Cordoba National University in Argentina and completed residency training in internal medicine at ECU.