Research Focus
Blanca I. Restrepo, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Texas Health Houston, School of Public Health in Brownsville, Texas. She has conducted pathogenesis studies with fungi, bacteria and helminths and her current work is devoted to tuberculosis (TB). Dr. Restrepo is bilingual and bi-cultural, and conducts multi-disciplinary studies in the Texas-Mexico border that are devoted to understanding the epidemiology and the biological basis for the re-emerging importance of type 2 diabetes (T2D) and old age as risk factors for TB. She works closely with the health authorities from northeastern Mexico and south Texas. She pioneered the discovery of the re-emerging importance of T2D as a risk factor for TB in contemporary times, and the demonstration of dysfunctional immunity in TB-T2D patients. Her team showed that the community in the Texas-Mexico border has among the highest prevalence of T2D among TB patients worldwide (nearly 40% of the TB patients have T2D). Her long-term goal for TB-T2D studies is to identify strategies to stratify the millions of T2D patients at risk for TB, for improved T2D management and TB prevention. She holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Texas Health San Antonio.