When it comes to research, few can match the output of Dr. Thomas P. Lodise:
- Since he joined ACPHS in 2002, he has amassed more than 240 peer-reviewed publications on PubMed, the online database maintained by the National Library of Medicine, averaging nearly 11 publications a year.
- Based on a composite score that aims to measure research impact, he ranks in the top 2% of the nearly 7 million cited researchers with at least five publications in the Scopus academic online database.
- In his top three subfields (microbiology, pharmacology and pharmacy and epidemiology), he is in the top 1% of cited scientists of all time.
These awe-inspiring numbers, however, do not do justice to Dr. Lodise’s work. To achieve such results, Dr. Lodise is as driven as one might expect, working well into evenings and weekends designing studies, analyzing and interpreting data, and writing manuscripts to enhance our understanding of the epidemiology and treatment of patients with infections that have become resistant to commonly used medications.
As strong a focus as he has on advancing the field of infectious diseases, what drives him is the prospect of improving patients’ lives. At his core, Dr. Lodise is a pharmacist, focused on developing the best treatment practices for patients with antimicrobial-resistant infections.
“It’s one thing to publish research,” he said, “but research cannot improve patient care unless the knowledge is transferable to clinical practice.”
Always eyeing the practical applications of his work, Dr. Lodise uses cutting-edge study design and mathematical methods to develop anti-infective treatment strategies that are personalized to the patient, improve outcomes, reduce the likelihood of adverse drug reactions and minimize the emergence of drug-resistant infections.
His focus expands beyond the individual level to populations of patients. Dr. Lodise and his collaborators could be said to be working to save future generations in their quest to ensure antimicrobial drugs maintain their effectiveness. A 2019 study in The Lancet estimates the annual death toll associated with antimicrobial resistance to be upwards of 5 million people; that number is expected to grow in coming years due to rising rates of resistance.
“Antimicrobial resistance is one of the world’s biggest problems,” Dr. Lodise said. “I keep at this work with the goal of preventing those projections from becoming reality.”
That may sound lofty and abstract. Indeed, like most researchers, Dr. Lodise derives satisfaction from knowing much of his work has moved his field forward, without always experiencing a concrete impact from each study. Yet he can also point to a handful of his studies that have positively changed the way medical professionals around the world manage patients.
In the late 2010s, his work culminated in a Phase 4 clinical study that changed worldwide dosing and monitoring practices for vancomycin, an antibiotic commonly used to treat a variety of bacterial infections, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). The change was significant in reducing some of the worst side effects of vancomycin without compromising its effectiveness, including cutting the incidence of acute kidney injury by more than half.
That’s important because the effects of acute kidney injury can be devastating, Dr. Lodise explained. In the short term, acute kidney injury can cause prolonged hospitalizations, higher treatment costs and increased deaths. In the long term, it is associated with a decline in organ function in other parts of the body, which increases patients’ susceptibility to other serious conditions, including cardiovascular events and infections caused by a weakened immune system.
A decade earlier, Dr. Lodise participated in numerous studies to determine the optimal dosing of beta-lactam antibiotics, commonly used for patients with serious Gram-negative bacterial infections, which are becoming increasingly difficult to treat due to rising rates of antibiotic resistance. His research directly changed the way beta-lactams are administered. Most importantly, the innovative dosing strategies he helped design have shortened hospital stays and increased patients’ chance of survival.
If there are numbers that matter to Dr. Lodise, it’s these uncountable ones: the likely hundreds of thousands of patients each year who are positively affected by his work.
“I’m one of the fortunate people who’s been put in a position to help others,” he said. “I take it seriously and responsibly. And I keep at it every day.”
This article originally appeared in Breakthroughs & Advances, Fall 2024