Academic Profiles
Mohammad Arfan Ikram
Adjunct Faculty

Mohammad Arfan Ikram

Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology

Epidemiology

mikram@hsph.harvard.edu

Links

Overview

I am Professor and Chair of Epidemiology at the department of Epidemiology, Erasmus MC Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I am also president of the Dutch Organization for Health Research and Development (ZonMW), the largest public funder in healthcare in The Netherlands. I am principal investigator of the Rotterdam Study and a key collaborator in the CHARGE (Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology) consortium. My research focuses on investigating the etiology of neurologic diseases in the elderly, with a particular focus on dementia, Alzheimer disease and healthy brain aging. The main areas of research are to elucidate the earliest signs of brain diseases, before clinical symptoms are present, and to understand how these lead to clinical manifestation of disease. Moreover, I am interested in preclinical signs that can be used to identify persons at highest risk of developing disease. More recently, I have expanded my research interests to focus on Healthy Longevity at large and determinants of Health care and Health care utilization.

For my research, I have used data from the large population-based Rotterdam Study and Rotterdam Scan Study that have followed nearly 15,000 persons for a period of nearly 30 years. A main focus on my research has been the use of MRI-imaging to understand brain disease. Also, I have used neuropsychological testing, genome- wide, exome chip, DNA-methylation and sequencing technologies, and recently electronic gait assessments. Not only am I interested in how these pre-clinical markers lead to clinical disease, I also want to disentangle the intricate relationships between these markers.

I am also active in various local and national research infrastructures, including EraCORe (clinic-based COVID- 19 cohort study), BBMRI-NL, Health-RI, X-omics, and Netherlands Cohorts Consortium. I have published over 1,050 international scientific papers (H-index = 103) and currently head a research group of 15 PhD-students, 3 post-docs, 3 MSc-students, and 5 research staff.

MSc, 2003, Clinical Epidemiology
Netherlands Institute of Health Sciences, Netherlands

MD, 2005, Medicine
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands

PhD, 2009, Neuroepidemiology
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands

Bibliography

Genetic variants for head size share genes and pathways with cancer.

Knol MJ, Poot RA, Evans TE, Satizabal CL, Mishra A, Sargurupremraj M, van der Auwera S, Duperron MG, Jian X, Hostettler IC, van Dam-Nolen DHK, Lamballais S, Pawlak MA, Lewis CE, Carrion-Castillo A, van Erp TGM, Reinbold CS, Shin J, Scholz M, Håberg AK, Kämpe A, Li GHY, Avinun R, Atkins JR, Hsu FC, Amod AR, Lam M, Tsuchida A, Teunissen MWA, Aygün N, Patel Y, Liang D, Beiser AS, Beyer F, Bis JC, Bos D, Bryan RN, Bülow R, Caspers S, Catheline G, Cecil CAM, Dalvie S, Dartigues JF, DeCarli C, Enlund-Cerullo M, Ford JM, Franke B, Freedman BI, Friedrich N, Green MJ, Haworth S, Helmer C, Hoffmann P, Homuth G, Ikram MK, Jack CR, Jahanshad N, Jockwitz C, Kamatani Y, Knodt AR, Li S, Lim K, Longstreth WT, Macciardi F, Mäkitie O, Mazoyer B, Medland SE, Miyamoto S, Moebus S, Mosley TH, Muetzel R, Mühleisen TW, Nagata M, Nakahara S, Palmer ND, Pausova Z, Preda A, Quidé Y, Reay WR, Roshchupkin GV, Schmidt R, Schreiner PJ, Setoh K, Shapland CY, Sidney S, St Pourcain B, Stein JL, Tabara Y, Teumer A, Uhlmann A, van der Lugt A, Vernooij MW, Werring DJ, Windham BG, Witte AV, Wittfeld K, Yang Q, Yoshida K, Brunner HG, Le Grand Q, Sim K, Stein DJ, Bowden DW, Cairns MJ, Hariri AR, Cheung CL, Andersson S, Villringer A, Paus T, Cichon S, Calhoun VD, Crivello F, Launer LJ, White T, Koudstaal PJ, Houlden H, Fornage M, Matsuda F, Grabe HJ, Ikram MA, Debette S, Thompson PM, Seshadri S, Adams HHH.

Cell Rep Med. 2024 May 21. 5(5):101529. PMID: 38703765

A genetic association study of circulating coagulation factor VIII and von Willebrand factor levels.

de Vries PS, Reventun P, Brown MR, Heath AS, Huffman JE, Le NQ, Bebo A, Brody JA, Temprano-Sagrera G, Raffield LM, Ozel AB, Thibord F, Jain D, Lewis JP, Rodriguez BAT, Pankratz N, Taylor KD, Polasek O, Chen MH, Yanek LR, Carrasquilla GD, Marioni RE, Kleber ME, Trégouët DA, Yao J, Li-Gao R, Joshi PK, Trompet S, Martinez-Perez A, Ghanbari M, Howard TE, Reiner AP, Arvanitis M, Ryan KA, Bartz TM, Rudan I, Faraday N, Linneberg A, Ekunwe L, Davies G, Delgado GE, Suchon P, Guo X, Rosendaal FR, Klaric L, Noordam R, van Rooij F, Curran JE, Wheeler MM, Osburn WO, O'Connell JR, Boerwinkle E, Beswick A, Psaty BM, Kolcic I, Souto JC, Becker LC, Hansen T, Doyle MF, Harris SE, Moissl AP, Deleuze JF, Rich SS, van Hylckama Vlieg A, Campbell H, Stott DJ, Soria JM, de Maat MPM, Almasy L, Brody LC, Auer PL, Mitchell BD, Ben-Shlomo Y, Fornage M, Hayward C, Mathias RA, Kilpeläinen TO, Lange LA, Cox SR, März W, Morange PE, Rotter JI, Mook-Kanamori DO, Wilson JF, van der Harst P, Jukema JW, Ikram MA, Blangero J, Kooperberg C, Desch KC, Johnson AD, Sabater-Lleal M, Lowenstein CJ, Smith NL, Morrison AC.

Blood. 2024 May 02. 143(18):1845-1855. PMID: 38320121

Social health and subsequent cognitive functioning in people aged 50 years and older: examining the mediating roles of depressive symptoms and inflammatory biomarkers in two European longitudinal studies.

Stafford J, Dekhtyar S, Welmer AK, Vetrano DL, Grande G, Laukka EJ, Marseglia A, Moulton V, Mansfield R, Liu Y, Ning K, Wolf-Ostermann K, Brodaty H, Samtani S, Ikram MA, Melis R, Rymaszewska J, Szczesniak D, Di Gessa G, Richards M, Davis D, Patalay P, Maddock J.

Lancet Healthy Longev. 2024 May. 5(5):e356-e369. PMID: 38705153