Rohit Loomba, MD, MHSc
- Gastroenterologist and Hepatologist
- Chief, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology
- Director, UCSD MASLD Research Center
- Professor of Medicine
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Rohit Loomba, MD, is a board-certified gastroenterologist. His expertise includes treating and managing many types of chronic liver disease, such as nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), nonalcoholic steatohepatitis, chronic hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hemochromatosis.
Dr. Loomba believes in providing compassionate and state-of-the-art care to his patients. He also believes in the importance of strong physician-patient relationships for improving medical decision making and delivering high-quality care in a friendly environment.
As a transplant hepatologist, Dr. Loomba works with transplant surgeons in the pre and postoperative care of liver transplant patients.
As a professor in the Division of Gastroenterology, Dr. Loomba instructs students, residents and fellows in the Department of Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine. His research focuses on all aspects of NAFLD, including prevalence in aging, epidemiology, genetic and environmental predisposition and progression.
An advocate of evidenced-based medicine, Dr. Loomba has led numerous clinical trials to help find innovative treatments for people suffering from liver illness. He also serves as the director of the Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis (NASH) Clinical Research Network at UC San Diego. Sponsored by the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), the NASH Clinical Research Network aims to facilitate and perform clinical, epidemiological and therapeutic research in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis.
Dr. Loomba is the founding director of the UC San Diego MASLD Research Center which is one of the most well-funded clinical and translational research programs at UC San Diego. The MASLD Research Center fosters collaborative team science where a multi-disciplinary team of researchers are conducting cutting-edge research in all aspects of NAFLD including non-invasive biomarkers, genetics, epidemiology, clinical trial design, imaging end-points, and integrated OMICs using microbiome, metabolome and lipidome. This integrated approach has led to several innovative applications such as establishment of MRI-PDFF as a non-invasive biomarker of treatment response in early phase trials in NASH, which has now been adopted in more than 100 clinical trials conducted worldwide. He holds several patents on non-invasive biomarkers of NASH and fibrosis.
He served as the elected chair of the NAFLD, Special Interest Group of the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases. He also serves on the scientific advisory board of numerous biotechnology and large pharmaceutical companies and guides clinical drug development and biomarker discovery programs globally.
He serves on the editorial board of Gastroenterology, Journal of Hepatology, GUT and Nature Reviews in Gastroenterology and Hepatology. He recently completed a 5-year term as the deputy editor of HEPATOLOGY, the official journal of the AASLD. Currently, he serves as the co-editor of Alimentary Pharmacology and Therapeutics, an international journal in the field of gastroenterology and hepatology. Dr. Loomba has published more than 400 manuscripts and has an H-index of 112. He has been consistently listed among the top 1% of the globally highly cited scientists across all fields in 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022 by Web of Science. He is an elected member of American Society of Clinical Investigation.
Dr. Loomba completed a fellowship in gastroenterology at UC San Diego School of Medicine and a fellowship in hepatology at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDKD) in Bethesda, Md. He completed a residency in internal medicine at St. Luke's Hospital in St. Louis. While in residency, he was selected for his clinical and leadership abilities to serve as chief resident. Dr. Loomba earned his medical degree from the Armed Forces Medical College in Pune, India. He obtained a Master of Health Science in clinical research from Duke University School of Medicine in Durham, N.C. Dr. Loomba is board certified in internal medicine and gastroenterology.
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