Liver Fibrosis
Expert Directory
Rohit Loomba, MD, MHSc
Director, NAFLD Research Center
Professor of Medicine, Director of Hepatology, and Vice Chief
Division of Gastroenterology
Adjunct Professor, Division of Epidemiology
University of California, San Diego
San Diego, CA
Rohit Loomba, MD, MHSc, is a professor of medicine (with tenure), director of hepatology, at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is an internationally recognized thought leader in the management of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) who has established a thriving and vibrant clinical and research center for NAFLD at UCSD.
Dr Loomba is the founding director of the UCSD NAFLD Research Center. Along with his collaborators, he has led several innovative applications, such as establishment of magnetic resonance imaging proton density fat fraction (MRI-PDFF) as a noninvasive biomarker of treatment response in early phase studies in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, which has now been adopted in more than 50 clinical trials conducted worldwide. He holds 2 patents on noninvasive biomarkers in NAFLD and fibrosis.
His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, including R01, U01, P30, and P01 grant mechanisms, as well as the Foundation for the National Institutes of Health; and the National Science Foundation. Additionally, he is involved with several investigator-initiated research projects funded by the industry. He is the principal investigator, UCSD, for the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive Kidney Disease–sponsored Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis Clinical Research Network. He served as the elected chair of the NAFLD Special Interest Group of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases and is an elected member of the National Board of Directors of the American Liver Foundation.
He serves on the editorial boards of Gastroenterology, the Journal of Hepatology, Gut, and Nature Reviews Gastroenterology & Hepatology. He served as the deputy editor of Hepatology, the official journal of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases, from 2017 to 2021.
Dr Loomba has published more than 300 manuscripts and has an H-index of 94. He is listed among the top 1% of the globally highly cited scientists across all fields in 2019 and 2020 by Web of Science. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation.
The U.S. News & World Report ranked the UCSD School of Medicine divisions of gastroenterology and hepatology as the number 1 research and education program in the world in 2021.
