Professor Hoda Malaty

Hoda M. Malaty, M.D., Ph.D. is professor of Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas, USA. She is a clinical epidemiologist with a primary interest in digestive diseases. She is a clinical epidemiologist with a primary interest in digestive diseases. She received her M.D. degree from Cairo University in 1980 and a Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the School of Public Health of the University of Texas Health Science Center, in Houston, Texas, USA in 1991. She joined the faculty of Baylor College of Medicine in 1991. She is now world recognized for her work regarding the epidemiology of Helicobacter pylori infection, GERD, and Inflammatory Bowel Diseases (IBD). H. pylori is etiologically related to gastritis, peptic ulcer disease, gastric adenocarcinoma, and primary B-cell gastric lymphoma and is a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. 

Dr. Malaty has performed many pivotal prospective epidemiologic studies in the US as well as in developing and developed countries. Her studies form much of the basis for the current understanding Helicobacter pylori infection.  She was among the first to study the influence of race and socioeconomic status on Helicobacter pylori infection, familial clustering, as well as the role of infants in transmission. She showed that the high prevalence of Helicobacter pylori in Blacks and Hispanics compared to whites was related to differences in socioeconomic status during childhood.  Her work was most consistent with the notion that Helicobacter pylori infection was primarily a childhood acquired disease and she therefore began to focus on the effect of the infection in the pediatric population. She has studied the epidemiology of Helicobacter pylori infection in the Korea, Japan, Russia, Italy, Poland, Kazakhstan, and Bhutan. 

Dr. Malaty and colleagues performed and published several studies on Crohn’s Disease and ulcerative colitis. Recently, she performed a large epidemiologic study in the kingdom of Bahrain and reported the novel findings that the incidence rate of Crohn's disease in Bahrain is increasing in all age groups  and it clusters among family members up to three generations suggesting the possibility of a common source exposure.