Ariel Jaitovich, MD

Associate Professor, Pulmonary Critical Care and Molecular and Cellular Physiology

Molecular and Cellular Physiology

Areas of Study

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)-induced skeletal muscle dysfunction, Hypercapnia-induced muscle wasting, Intensive care unit (ICU)-associated muscle disfunction

Education

Northwestern University2013Fellowship
John Stroger Hospital of Cook County2010Internal Medicine training
Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina1997MD

Research

Ariel Jaitovich is physician/scientist dedicated to both basic and translational research focused on skeletal muscle dysfunction in the context of acute and chronic pulmonary diseases; and on the effects of metabolism on ICU outcomes.

First animal model of COPD-induced skeletal muscle dysfunction

Over the last years, supported by an NIH/K award, we have investigated the effect of elevated CO₂on skeletal muscle turnover. Our lab has demonstrated that that high CO₂ accelerates muscle protein degradation, anabolic attenuation via AMP-dependent protein kinase.

We have also established an animal model of muscle wasting secondary to pulmonary emphysema that recapitulates most of the features observed in humans with COPD-associated muscle dysfunction.

See Korponay et.al Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol. 62:74-86 (2020); Balnis et.al. J Appl Physiol. 128:134-48 (2020) and Balnis et.al Am J Respir Cell Mol Biol in press (2020)

Images and a graph showing the effect of elevated CO2 on skeletal muscle turnover.

Skeletal muscle is the only body constituent that is associated with survival in critical illness

Over the last years, we have also defined the critical role of skeletal muscle as the only body mass constituent that independently associates with survival at the start of severe illness, and have contributed two major papers in the field based on prospective analyses of more than 500 patients.

See Jaitovich et.al. CHEST, 155;322-30, 2019 and Jaitovich et.al Crit Care 24:566 (2020).

Cross section CT scan of spinal vertebra

Multi-OMIC analysis of critical illness

Recently, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we had leveraged our infrastructure to investigate proteomics and metabolomics combined with outcomes analyses to generate a multi-omic prospective cohort of more than 100 patients, defined the unique cytokine landscape of severe Covid-19, and the genome-wide DNA methylation profile of these patients circulating leukocytes combined with RNA sequencing analyses, leading to cross-ome analyses.

See Overmyer KA et.al Cell Systems, 12; 1-18 (2021), Balnis J et.al. Am J Physiol Regul Integr Comp Physiol. 320:R250-57 (2021) and Balnis et.al Clin Epigenetics 13:118 (2021)