Vincent Lo Re, MD, MSCE

Professor of Medicine and Epidemiology; Director, Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science, Rutgers University

Vincent Lo Re is a pharmacoepidemiologist and Director of the Rutgers Center for Pharmacoepidemiology and Treatment Science. He conducts pharmacoepidemiology research, particularly related to infectious diseases and chronic liver diseases. He pioneered the use of electronic healthcare data for the study of acute and chronic liver diseases, particularly viral hepatitis. Dr. Lo Re was the first to develop computable phenotypes for many liver-related diseases, such as decompensated cirrhosis, hepatocellular carcinoma, cholangiocarcinoma, hepatic steatosis, severe acute liver injury, and acute liver failure events using electronic health data. The application of these methods led to the conduct of important pharmacoepidemiologic studies by Dr. Lo Re, including examining the impact of HIV viral suppression with antiretroviral therapy on end-stage liver disease outcomes, measuring and evaluating adherence to antiviral therapies, and identifying important adverse effects of antiviral therapies. His team was the first to create the cascade of care of hepatitis C infection, and the first to report on the disparities in access to the new direct-acting antiviral therapies for chronic hepatitis C infection. His research contributed to the removal of restrictions on reimbursements to these therapies, particularly for Medicare beneficiaries.

Most recently, Dr. Lo Re’s team has evaluated the impact of drug-induced liver injury. This research led to high impact publications, including the first population-based study evaluating the incidence of drug-induced acute liver failure, the first study to demonstrate the hepatic safety of statins regardless of HIV and/or chronic hepatitis status, the development of prognostic models to estimate the risk of acute liver failure in patients with drug-induced liver injury, and a new method to measure incidence rates of hospitalization for severe acute liver injury following initiation of potentially hepatotoxic medications.