Research | Mount Sinai Today

Studying Diet and Multiple Sclerosis Symptoms

Updated on Feb 4, 2019 | Featured, Research, Your Health

Ilana B. Katz Sand, MD, with Amit Blushtein, a clinical trial participant, one of 18 multiple sclerosis patients randomized to follow a special dietary plan.

Neurologists have long suspected a link between diet and symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), but today, Ilana B. Katz Sand, MD, Assistant Professor of Neurology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and Associate Medical Director of the Corinne Goldsmith Dickinson Center for Multiple Sclerosis, is offering fresh insights.

Dr. Katz Sand and a team from the Icahn School of Medicine are currently conducting studies aimed at understanding the role of gut bacteria in inflammation and neurodegeneration. A recent publication of which Dr. Katz Sand is a co-author suggests that gut microbial composition in individuals with MS differs from that in healthy controls. Because gut bacteria communicate heavily with the resident immune system in the gut, as well as secrete molecules that can have distant effects, Dr. Katz Sand and colleagues hypothesize that changes in gut microbiota may contribute to the development of MS and other autoimmune diseases and also may influence disease course once MS is established. If further research confirms this, investigators like Dr. Katz Sand believe it may be possible someday to offer patients microbiome-based therapy to keep the bacteria in check.

One of the biggest drivers of gut microbial composition is diet, and it is this potential mechanistic link that led Dr. Katz Sand to begin studying dietary factors in MS. She says, “We want to better understand the inflammatory process, the neurodegenerative process, and the effect that diet has on MS symptoms. Our findings could be very important in understanding the onset of MS and how to treat it.”

Until recently, developing a methodology to study the possible connection between diet and MS has proved challenging because a double-blind randomized controlled trial doesn’t lend itself to studying diet. Dr. Katz Sand, who has pursued this clinical interest since she was a fellow, designed what she believes is a scientifically sound methodology that may help lay the groundwork for future clinical trials in this area.

She has developed a study to begin evaluating the hypothesis that a modified Mediterranean diet—which includes fresh fish, fruits, vegetables, nuts, whole grains, and avocados, and eliminates meat, dairy, and processed foods—may reduce inflammation characteristic of MS, whereby immune cells attack the myelin insulation that surrounds and insulates nerve fibers, causing problems with vision, balance, muscle control, cognition, and other debilitating symptoms.

She and her team have recruited 36 participants, 18 of whom have been randomized to follow this dietary plan for six months. All participants move through the study in small groups according to their assignment. The dietary-arm participants attend monthly meetings, led by Dr. Katz Sand, a nutritionist, and a research coordinator, that include presentations about various aspects of the diet to keep them motivated—one of the challenges of the study. There, they have the opportunity to discuss their experiences with their restrictive diet and to share tips.

Additionally, they are asked to complete questionnaires at the meetings and through regular emails. Certain markers, including salt, fatty acids, and carotenoids, are tested through lab work at the beginning and end of the study, and participants also are tested for the diet’s effects on body mass index, blood pressure, cholesterol, and glucose. The research team also employs quality-of-life scales that assess fatigue and measure depression, common MS symptoms. “We’ve got a nice group dynamic going,” says Dr. Katz Sand.

The non-dietary intervention participants attend study visits occasionally and also are offered seminars on topics of interest to MS patients. At the end of their study period, if they wish to start the diet, they are offered an opportunity to meet with the study’s nutritionist. The study, funded by the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, began in January 2017, and the last group of participants will finish in April 2018. The challenge for Dr. Katz Sand and her team will be to scale the study to include more participants, which they are planning to do in the near future.

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Integrative Medicine Pioneer Deepak Chopra, MD, Meets With Mount Sinai Research Team

Updated on Feb 21, 2018 | Featured, Research, Your Health

From left: Eric Schadt, PhD; Leena Nasser, Executive Director, Chopra Institute; Deepak Chopra, MD; Dennis S. Charney, MD; Ash Tewari, MBBS, MCh; and David L. Reich, MD.

Can meditation and other forms of alternative medicine be used in conjunction with traditional treatments to improve overall physiological and psychological health and well-being? This was a topic for brainstorming between best-selling author Deepak Chopra, MD, and basic science researchers and physician-scientists who attended a meeting hosted by Ash Tewari, MBBS, MCh, the Kyung Hyun Kim, MD Chair in Urology, Mount Sinai Health System.

The researchers, who were from the Department of Urology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, joined Dr. Chopra, a pioneer in integrative medicine and co-founder of the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, to discuss their mutual interest in the study of the mind-body connection. Also attending were: Dennis S. Charney, MD, Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, and President for Academic Affairs, Mount Sinai Health System; David L. Reich, MD, President and Chief Operating Officer, The Mount Sinai Hospital; and Eric Schadt, PhD, Dean for Precision Medicine, and the Jean C. and James W. Crystal Professor of Genomics.

One topic they explored was to study, in a clinical setting, whether mind-body intervention through meditation and other practices such as yoga reduces inflammation and thus prostate cancer progression. In 2016, Dr. Schadt led a study with researchers from the University of California, San Francisco, and Harvard Medical School that assessed the biological impact of meditation. The study, which appeared in Translational Psychiatry and was partially funded by the Chopra Center for Wellbeing, found that meditation could ease stress and benefit the immune system.

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Machine Learning Techniques Generate Clinical Labels of Medical Scans

Updated on Nov 19, 2025 | Artificial Intelligence, Research

Researchers used machine learning techniques, including natural language processing algorithms, to identify clinical concepts in radiologist reports for CT scans, according to a study conducted at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai and published in the journal Radiology. The technology is an important first step in the development of artificial intelligence that could interpret scans and diagnose conditions.

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Five Specialists in the Field of Psychotic Illnesses Join Mount Sinai’s Department of Psychiatry

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Featured, Psychiatry, Research

From left: Judith Weissman, PhD, JD, MPH; Dolores Malaspina, MD, MSPH, MS; David Kimhy, PhD; Lotje de Witte, MD, PhD; and Cheryl Corcoran, MD

The recent recruitment of five specialists to the Department of Psychiatry at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai has revitalized research, treatment, and prevention efforts in the field of psychotic illnesses and has led to the creation of the Critical Connections Program, which will help advance these endeavors.

Critical Connections will incorporate the collaborative efforts of multiple specialties within the Mount Sinai Health System—including neuroimaging, psychophysiology, genetics, neural stem cells, immunology, and epidemiology—with the goal of using the latest technologies and developments to find personalized interventions and treatments for psychosis. Clinical sites across the Health System also will contribute to a shared biorepository of samples collected from people with these illnesses.

Dolores Malaspina, MD, MSPH, MS, a leader in the field of psychosis, and Director of the new Critical Connections Program, says, “The most fundamental human quality is the ability to connect with others. Severe mental illness, particularly psychosis in schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, and other conditions, disrupts this capacity and has an enormous impact on individuals, families, communities, and the general population.” The costs of social services, hospitals, courts, and prisons have an economic impact, as well. “In spite of significant scientific advances, we still know little about how to prevent and treat most psychotic illnesses. Breakthrough discoveries require innovative designs,” she adds.

Resilience, genetic susceptibility, family characteristics, environmental exposures, and other factors that account for the influences of nature and nurture will be studied by the program’s researchers. Pivotal changes occur in the brain throughout young adulthood that can be directed toward recovery and resilience. Plans call for educational training of medical students, residents, and fellows to translate new findings into evidence-based treatments.

Prior to her recruitment to Mount Sinai, Dr. Malaspina established successful clinical research programs in psychosis at the New York State Psychiatric Institute and at Bellevue Hospital Center. One of her currently funded National Institutes of Health studies that uses the Genomic Psychiatry Cohort examines the gut microbiome-brain axis, with respect to brain inflammation.

The following renowned recruits to the Icahn School of Medicine will be working with Dr. Malaspina to create a robust center of psychosis at the Mount Sinai Health System:

Cheryl Corcoran, MD, Senior Faculty, and Program Leader in Psychosis Risk at the Mount Sinai Health System, plans to launch two programs: a clinical risk and resilience research program for teens and young adults who have unusual thoughts, perceptual disturbances, and suspiciousness, and a familial-risk program for young relatives of patients with psychosis. Dr. Corcoran also plans to partner with community clinicians and experts in adolescent medicine to implement early identification and intervention programs for at-risk youth, and collaborate with basic and translational neuroscientists to study the pathophysiology underlying illness risk.

Currently, her main focus is natural language in neuropsychiatric disorders. Working with computational neuroscientists, Dr. Corcoran has identified language features that predict psychosis onset in at-risk youths. This includes subtle decreases in semantic coherence and complexity of speech (such as using shorter sentences and eliminating the words “which” and “that”). Funding from the National Institute of Mental Health has enabled Dr. Corcoran to study the neural correlates of these language abnormalities in a larger international cohort that will determine replicability and develop targets for preventive intervention.

David Kimhy, PhD, Senior Faculty, also serves as Director of the Experimental Psychopathology Laboratory, and Leader in New Interventions in Schizophrenia at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. Dr. Kimhy will focus on the development of novel interventions for schizophrenia and investigate the pathophysiology and phenomenology of cognitive, affective, and social functioning in individuals with schizophrenia.

Over the past decade, Dr. Kimhy has pioneered the use of mobile phone technologies in the study of psychotic symptoms and functioning, and the use of active-play video games as part of aerobic exercise training aimed at improving neurocognition in people with schizophrenia.

Preliminary work from his laboratory indicates that aerobic exercise training is effective in improving cognitive functioning in this population, with improvements linked to exercise-related upregulation of Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor (BDNF), a biomarker of neuroplasticity. His current funding includes an award from the National Institute of Mental Health supporting a multisite, single-blind, randomized clinical trial examining the impact of aerobic exercise on neurocognition and biomarkers of neuroplasticity in individuals with schizophrenia.

As Director of Education at The Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center in the Bronx, Dr. Kimhy will continue his longstanding commitment to training future researchers and clinicians.

Lotje de Witte, MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, combines clinical work and scientific exploration in immunology in pursuit of treatments and interventions for psychiatric diseases. Her laboratory investigates the connection between the immune system and the pathogenesis of psychiatric disorders, such as schizophrenia, mood disorders, and autism.

Recently, Dr. de Witte set up a novel stem-cell derived brain organoid model to study microglia, and established the methodology to isolate microglia from postmortem brain tissue. Microglia cells are part of the immune system and involved in both inflammation and reconstruction in the brain, processes thought to be involved in schizophrenia.

After studying the cell biological mechanisms of HIV-1 transmission, Dr. de Witte used this experience to start a distinctive research line at the Brain Center Rudolf Magnus in Utrecht, the Netherlands. She received her MD and PhD at the VU University Medical Centre, Amsterdam. Her research has been published in Nature Medicine, the Journal of Clinical Investigation, PLOS Pathogens, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Judith Weissman, PhD, JD, MPH, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, serves as a Research Health Specialist at the James J. Peters VA Medical Center. Her expertise is in using national data sets to examine health care patterns in the mentally ill.

At the VA Medical Center, she will collaborate with other researchers to investigate the incidence and risk factors of suicide, along with the access and utilization of mental health care services among vulnerable populations, particularly military veterans with mental illness. Dr. Weissman will also research possible interventions. Suicide by veterans remains a critical problem, and few empirically based treatment strategies for suicide prevention among post-deployed military personnel currently exist.

Serving as a Senior Service Fellow at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention earlier in her career helped hone Dr. Weissman’s skill in analyzing large data sets. She has also investigated topics such as polypharmacy in the nation’s elderly and disparities in antidepressant prescribing practices.

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Blocking a Hormone Builds Bone and Burns Fat At Menopause, a Promising Study Finds

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Featured, Research

Mone Zaidi, MD, PhD

A single hormone whose levels rise at menopause could be responsible for the weight gain and bone loss that many women experience in middle age, and blocking that hormone could help reverse those effects, according to a study in mice that was led by Mone Zaidi, MD, PhD, Professor of Medicine (Endocrinology, Diabetes and Bone Disease), at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. The strong clinical potential of these results has been noted in The New England Journal of Medicine, and in Nature Medicine, which in December 2017 named the study one of the year’s eight “notable advances.”

The work began about 10 years ago when Dr. Zaidi challenged endocrinology’s long-held notion that the pituitary follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH) controlled only reproductive targets: the production of estrogen in women and sperm in men.

Using animal models, Dr. Zaidi showed that FSH had direct effects in conserving bone. That discovery piqued Dr. Zaidi’s curiosity: Could FSH also play a role in the sharp increase in visceral fat that occurs in women during late perimenopause?

To answer the question, his group conducted a study that included injecting a polyclonal antibody that blocked FSH signaling into several groups of mice: females that had their ovaries removed and were fed a normal diet; male and female mice that were fed a high-fat diet; and female mice on a normal diet.

“What we found was that by targeting FSH and blocking its action, we could not only prevent bone loss but also reduce body fat and improve energy homeostasis,” he observes. “We thought to ourselves, ‘This is really a weird finding.’”

Dr. Zaidi, who is founding director of the Mount Sinai Bone Program, then enlisted the support of Clifford J. Rosen, MD, a bone and fat expert who is Director of the Center for Clinical & Translational Research at the Maine Medical Center Research Institute. For the next two and a half years, the scientists replicated each other’s work, culminating in the publication of a comprehensive study in the June 2017 issue of the journal Nature. Their findings confirmed that blocking access of FSH to its receptor using an epitope-specific polyclonal antibody resulted in increased bone mass and a marked reduction in visceral fat in ovariectomized mice. As for the possible mechanism behind these changes, Dr. Zaidi found that the antibody reduced white adipose tissue—where fat is stored—and converted it to brown (or beige) adipose tissue, the type of fat that is burned to provide energy.

Images from the study in Nature show CT scans of the abdomens of mice that were fed a high-fat diet. The amount of visceral fat (in red) was significantly lower, right, when a mouse was injected with an antibody to the follicle-stimulating hormone, compared with a mouse injected with the control substance IgG.

In humans, a version of the antibody used in his study might be able to simultaneously treat bone loss and fat accumulation in women, offering a new approach to associated medical conditions, such as osteoporosis, cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes. And because the antibody was found to be effective in both male and female mice, the benefits could extend to both genders in humans, particularly in controlling obesity.

Dr. Zaidi points out that two classes of obesity drugs are currently on the market: those that suppress appetite and those that reduce the absorption of fat from the gut. Both classes, however, come with significant side effects.

“The FSH-blocking antibody works on neither of these sites, but instead acts directly on fat cells by converting white to brown fat tissue,” Dr. Zaidi says. “This is truly a new game.”

In collaboration with Mount Sinai Innovation Partners, Dr. Zaidi is exploring opportunities to realize the vast potential of this research through commercial partnerships.

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Mount Sinai Researcher Featured on CBS News 60 Minutes Broadcast

Updated on Jun 30, 2022 | Research

Samuel Gandy, MD, PhD, Professor, Neurology, Psychiatry, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, was featured in a 60 Minutes report on CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy. The report explains how the brain disorder that has been diagnosed in many football players is now being found in a growing number of combat veterans exposed to explosions.