Medical Genetics clinical staff profiles

Gail Pairitz Jarvik, M.D., Ph.D.

Head, Division of Medical Genetics
Arno G. Motulsky Professor of Medicine
Joint Professor of Medicine and Genome Sciences
Adjunct Professor of Epidmiology

K-253B, Health Sciences Building
Medical Genetics, Box 357720
Seattle, WA 98195-7720
Phone: 206-685-9069
FAX: 206-616-7186
E-mail: pair@u.washington.edu

Jarvik Lab

Research Profile (Community of Science)

Gail Jarvik MD, PhD is the Arno G. Motulsky Professor of Medicine and Genome Sciences and Head of the Division of Medical Genetics (only the third since the founding of the division), an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at the UW Medical Center (UWMC) and an Affiliate Member of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. She is a Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, and has been made a Lifetime National Associate of the National Academies, “In recognition of extraordinary service to the National Academy of Science.” She has been designated “A Local Legend from Washington” by Senator Maria Cantwell, in association with the American Medical Women’s Association and the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Her abilities as a scholar and a leader have been recognized by the National Institutes of Health, which recently asked her to chair a Genomics, Computational Biology and Technology Study Section. In addition to that service, leading the Division of Medical Genetics and actively pursuing her own research, she continues to be a practicing clinician in Internal Medicine and Medical Genetics.

Dr. Jarvik's major interest is in the genetics of common disease. She is involved in a number of research projects that address the inheritance of diseases of complex etiology. These projects use statistical genetics methods such as linkage analysis, complex segregation analysis, and association and interaction tests, in large data-sets collected in collaboration with molecular biologists and epidemiologists. She is particularly interested in the analysis of risk factors for coronary artery disease, including lipid disorders. A major focus of research is the study of gene-by-gene interactions in the inheritance of familial combined hyperlipidemia and elevated levels of apolipoprotein B. That study is also directed at mapping an apolipoprotein B elevating locus. A second major project involves lipid and oxidative risk factors in a case-control study of carotid artery disease. Associations between lipid factors, the HDL-associated antioxidant enzyme paraoxonase activity and genotype, and susceptibility of LDL to oxidation are being evaluated. Changes in gene effects with age, Alzheimer Disease, and prostate cancer are also areas of study.

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