Farsad Afshinnia MD

Dr. Afshinnia entered medical school in 1988 and graduated with a medical degree in 1995 from Isfahan University of Medical Sciences in Iran. He became interested in epidemiology and clinical research at an early stage of his career, taught introductory research design and data analysis at the Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, and practiced medicine part-time in the inpatient and outpatient settings.

He immigrated to the United States in 2000 and joined the Internal Medicine residency program at the Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York from 2002 to 2005. After graduation from residency, he practiced internal medicine as a hospitalist until July 2010. He enrolled in the Master of Science clinical research training program at the University of Minnesota in 2007 and graduated in 2010 while working as a hospitalist. He was then recruited as a Nephrology Fellow to the University of Michigan in July 2010 and was appointed as a Clinical Lecturer in the Division of Nephrology effective July 1, 2012.

Farsad’s research interests include identifying risk factors, developing strategies for early disease detection, and risk factor modification, and examining their impact on outcomes in chronic kidney disease. Therefore he joined Dr. Pennathur’s lab in 2013, with research efforts aimed at the identification and validation of prognostic metabolites capable of predicting the progression of chronic kidney disease to end-stage kidney disease at earlier stages of disease using targeted and untargeted metabolomic platforms in established cohorts of patients with kidney disease. To that end, the impact of novel biomarkers in risk stratification and early diagnosis, besides their impact on renal and cardiovascular outcomes beyond currently used traditional biomarkers are under investigation.