Lipid Association of India recognizes Dr. Navin Nanda with Lifetime Achievement Award

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Dr. Navin C. Nanda was recently recognized by the Lipid Association of India with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Lipids consist of cholesterol and other harmful substances in the blood implicated in the causation of heart attacks and strokes.

He has done pioneering work in the field of lipids, atherosclerosis (heart attack) and diabetes mellitus in India as well as in the Asian Indian population in the United States.

Dr. Nanda has already been recognized for pioneering work in the field of Echocardiography and been honored as the Father of Echocardiography around the world, a press release from Dr. Nanda said.

The citation reads as follows:

“He was the first to study and show a high prevalence of myocardial infarction (heart attack) in young adults in India. This pioneering study which was published in 1967 while he was still a resident in the Department of Cardiology at the King Edward Memorial Hospital in Mumbai also included measurement of serum cholesterol levels in these patients who were between 18 and 40 years old with the highest number in the 31-35 and 36-40 age groups. He with his mentor Dr. K.K. Datey also published in 1967 in the New England Journal of Medicine a study relating hyperglycemia (increased blood sugar) and diabetes mellitus to acute myocardial infarction (heart attack) in India which was hailed in an editorial in the same Journal as the “the first thorough study of an Asiatic population” “and still more important is the long-term observation and uniform repetition of glucose tolerance tests in their cases.”

Subsequently, Dr. Nanda and his group were the first to show in 1999, an increased prevalence of smaller and denser LDL cholesterol particles in the blood of Asian Indians as compared to whites in USA. They also showed in a study published in the European Heart Journal in 1998, increased platelet activation and fibrinogen (these cause blood clotting) in Asian Indians in U.S. as compared to whites.

Dr. Nanda’s group was also the first in 2004 to study the prevalence of stroke and associated factors in this population as well as the first to point out the high prevalence of diabetes mellitus in Asian Indians living in the USA as compared to other ethnic groups.

Dr. Navin Nanda MD, DSc (Hon) is Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Cardiovascular Disease at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, Alabama.