Amita Gupta, MD, MHS

Role: 
Faculty
Professor of Medicine and Public Health; Director, Division of Infectious Diseases
Amita Gupta, MD, MHS

Dr. Gupta is Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. She is also Faculty Co-chair of the Johns Hopkins Gupta-Klinsky India Institute, and Professor of Infectious Diseases at the JH School of Medicine. She has a joint appointment in International Health at the JH Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Board certified by the American Board of Internal Medicine in infectious diseases, Dr. Gupta specializes in international public health, clinical research, and education in infectious diseases, HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis (TB), and antimicrobial resistant infections. Since 2003, her work has been focused primarily on India, where she leads several Indo-JHU research collaborations. She serves in leadership positions as Co-Chair of the Faculty Steering Committee of the Johns Hopkins Gupta-Klinsky India Institute, Center Director for the Johns Hopkins Precision Medicine Center for Excellence for COVID-19, the US chair for the Indo-US Vaccine Action Program sponsored RePORT India TB research consortium, which is funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the government of India, Department of Biotechnology. She also serves on the global RePORT International Executive Committee, a multilateral global consortia for TB research. She is Co-principal Investigator of the NIH-funded Baltimore-Washington-India HIV and Infectious Diseases Clinical Trials Unit (BWI-CTU), and she is an active clinical investigator in multi-country trials conducted by the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) and the International Maternal Pediatric Adolescent AIDS Trials Network (IMPAACT), and has served as protocol chair for high impact studies that have resulted in publications in The New England Journal of Medicine and The Lancet. She is Co-chair of the NIH and AmFAR funded IeDea HIV/TB Working Group and Scientific Committee co-Chair for IMPAACT TB. 

She has been awarded research grants from the NIH, CDC, UNITAID, and several philanthropic foundations to investigate infectious diseases of importance to India and beyond. In 2019, Dr. Gupta was appointed by the US Health and Human Services Secretary for a 4-year term to the NIAID Council, the chief advisory committee for National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. In 2020, she was invited to the Governing Board of the Indo-U.S. Science & Technology Forum

Dr. Gupta is an author of more than 200 peer-reviewed research publications and 7 book chapters on prevention and treatment of HIV, TB, and other infectious diseases, primarily in low- and middle-income settings. She has also mentored more than 35 junior scientists in India and the US to run research studies and submit their own scientific findings to peer-reviewed publications.

Dr. Gupta received an undergraduate degree from MIT, a Doctor of Medicine from Harvard Medical School, and a Master of Health Sciences in clinical investigation from JH Bloomberg School of Public Health. She completed her internal medicine training at San Francisco General Hospital-University of California, San Francisco, followed by a post-doctoral fellowships with the Epidemic Intelligence Service at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC, Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases) and at the JHU School of Medicine (Infectious Diseases).

Publications on PubMed

Research Program Building and Leadership

  • 2007-present: Chair, IMPAACT P1078, A Randomized Clinical Trial to Evaluate the Safety of Immediate (antepartum-initiated) Versus Deferred Reduction in TB Incidence and Mortality Among HIV-Infected Women and Their Infants in High TB Incidence Settings
  • 2008-present: Protocol Vice-Chair of ACTG 5274, Reducing Early Mortality Among Patients with Advanced HIV Disease: A Randomized Strategy Trial Comparing the Safety and Efficacy of an Individualized Patient TB Treatment Approach to a Public Health Pre-emptive TB Treatment Approach in Resource-Limited Settings (REMEMBER)
  • 2008-2012: Co-investigator ACTG 5267, A Phase I, Safety, Tolerability, and Pharmacokinetic Interaction Study of Single-Dose TMC207 and Efavirenz in Health Volunteers
  •  2008-2012: Co-investigator ACTG 5253 Sensitivity and Specificity of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Screening and Diagnostics in HIV-Infected Individuals
  • 2009-present: Protocol Vice Chair ACTG 5279, Phase III Clinical Trial of Short-Course Rifapentine/Isoniazid for the Prevention of Active Tuberculosis in HIV-Infected Adults with Latent Tuberculosis Infection
  • 2010: Invited by NIAID, NIH to be a part of a NIH delegation to assess scope of TB research in India. Accompanied the Deputy Director of the Division of AIDS, the Associate Director of International Health Programs, NIAID and other NIH delegates on site visits to 15 Indian institutions throughout the country
  • 2011-2012: Selected to participate in the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine’s Office in Science and Medicine (OWISM) Leadership Program for Women Faculty
  • 2012-present: Member, ACTG TB Transformative Science Group
  • 2014-present: IMPAACT TB Scientific Committee Vice-Chair
  • 2014-present: Co-investigator IMPAACT 2001 Protocol Team, PK and Safety of INH and Rifapentine in Pregnancy
  • 2014-2016: US Co-chair, NIH-India Government, Regional Prospective Observational Research in Tuberculosis (RePORT)
  • 2014-present: Co-chair PHOENIX ACTG A5300/IMPAACT 2003 feasibility study and MDR TB contact prophylaxis trial
  • 2016-present: US Chair, TB Research Consortium, RePORT India
  • 2016-present: Member, Executive Committee, RePORT International
  • 2017: Selected to participate in the Johns Hopkins Leadership Development Program (LDP)
  • 2015-present: Member, Union Interest Group in Maternal-Infant TB working group
  • 2018: Participant, Technical Consultation on Advances in Clinical Trial Design for Development of New TB Treatments, WHO Report generation
  • 2018-present: co Chair, IeDEA TB working group
  • 2019-present: NIAID Council
  • 2020-present: Governing Board Member, Indo-US Science and Technology Forum (IUSTTF)
  • 2020-present: Co-Chair, Faculty Steering Committee, Johns Hopkins Gupta-Klinsky India Institute
  • 2020-present: Center Director, Johns Hopkins Precision Medicine Center for Excellence for COVID-19

 

Diabetes and pre-diabetes among household contacts of tuberculosis patients in India: is it time to screen them all?

Post Date: 
2018-05-22
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The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease
Authors find that screening contacts of TB patients for pre-DM/DM and linking them to care may mitigate the risk of developing tuberculosis and improve management of diabetes.

The global neurological burden of tuberculosis

Post Date: 
2018-05-18
Publication: 
Seminars in Neurology
Central nervous system (CNS) involvement of tuberculosis (TB) is the most severe manifestation of TB and accounts for approximately 5 to 10% of all extrapulmonary TB (EPTB) cases and approximately 1% of all TB cases. TB meningitis (TBM) is the most common form of CNS TB, though other forms...

Antibiotic utilization and the role of suspected and diagnosed mosquito borne illness among adults and children with acute febrile illness in Pune, India

Post Date: 
2018-05-02
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Clinical Infectious Diseases
Mosquito-borne disease identification is associated with reduced empiric antibiotic use and faster antibiotic discontinuation.

Addressing knowledge gaps and prevention for tuberculosis-infected Indian adults: a vital part of elimination

Post Date: 
2018-05-02
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BMC Infectious Diseases
BMC Infectious Diseases : Our survey among TB patients' household contacts with evidence of recent exposure found that knowledge is poor and families are confused about disease transmission.

Hepatotoxicity during isoniazid preventive therapy and antiretroviral therapy in people living with HIV with severe immunosuppression: a secondary analysis of a multi-country open-label randomized controlled clinical trial

Post Date: 
2018-05-01
Publication: 
Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes
BACKGROUND: Hepatotoxicity associated with isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT) and antiretroviral therapy (ART) has not been well studied in severely immunosuppressed people with HIV. Our objective was to determine risk factors for hepatotoxicity in severely immunosuppressed individuals...

MDR-TB in children: back to the basics

Post Date: 
2018-05-01
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The International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease
IJTLD: Summary of the Pediatric Multidrug-Resistant Tuberculosis Clinical Trials Landscape Meeting: a primer of current directions.

Re: How serious are global health leaders about gender equality?

Post Date: 
2018-04-06
Publication: 
British Medical Journal
Letter to the Editor: At the 2017 Consortium of Universities for Global Health (CUGH) in Washington, D.C., a panel of female global health leaders (AG, MB, IK, JM, YM) discussed the barriers to female leadership and put forward actionable advice on how to address them.

Vector-borne disease is a common cause of hospitalized febrile illness in India

Post Date: 
2018-03-26
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American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
Diagnostic strategies adapted for season and age may reduce diagnostic uncertainty and identify causative organisms in treatable, fatal causes of AFI.

Intestinal barrier dysfunction and microbial translocation in HIV-infected pregnant women is associated with preterm birth

Post Date: 
2018-03-24
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Clinical Infectious Diseases
Our results show select immune markers can identify women at higher risk for PTB in HIV-1-infected populations and suggest modulating gut barrier integrity and microbial translocation may affect PTB.

Gender-based violence screening methods preferred by women visiting a public hospital in Pune, India

Post Date: 
2018-01-22
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BMC Womens Health
BMC Womens Health : In our study, 23% of women reported experiencing gender based violence, and 90% reported they had never been asked about it in the healthcare setting.

Secondhand smoke exposure and validity of self-report in low-income women and children in India

Post Date: 
2018-01-10
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Pediatrics
Pediatrics: Dr. Jessica Elf and colleagues evaluated the validity of standard self-reported measures for secondhand smoke (SHS) exposure among women and children in urban India.

Suboptimal antituberculosis drug concentrations and outcomes in small and HIV‐coinfected children in India: Recommendations for dose modifications

Post Date: 
2017-12-16
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Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
This work aimed to evaluate the once-daily antituberculosis treatment as recommended by the new Indian pediatric guidelines. Isoniazid, rifampin, and pyrazinamide concentration-time profiles and treatment outcome were obtained from 161 Indian children with drug-sensitive tuberculosis...

Isoniazid concentrations in hair and plasma area-under-the-curve exposure among children with tuberculosis

Post Date: 
2017-12-07
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PLOS One
PLOS One: Mave and colleagues compared TB drug exposure in plasma and hair samples among a small cohort of children.

Suboptimal anti-tuberculosis drug concentrations and outcomes in small and HIV coinfected children in India: recommendations for dose modifications

Post Date: 
2017-12-01
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Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
This work aimed to evaluate the once-daily anti-tuberculosis treatment as recommended by the new Indian pediatric guidelines. Isoniazid, rifampin and pyrazinamide concentration-time profiles and treatment outcome were obtained from 161 Indian children with drug-sensitive tuberculosis...

Prevalence of dysglycemia and clinical presentation of pulmonary tuberculosis in Western India

Post Date: 
2017-12-01
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International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease
Objectives: To estimate the prevalence and risk factors of pre-diabetes mellitus (DM) and DM, and its associations with the clinical presentation of tuberculosis (TB). Design: Screening for DM was conducted among adults (age  18 years) with confirmed TB between December 2013 and...

Risk factors for early mortality on antiretroviral therapy in advanced HIV-infected adults

Post Date: 
2017-10-23
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AIDS
Background: Many HIV-infected individuals present with advanced HIV disease. These patients are at high risk of death after antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation, but risk factors for death in these patients are unclear. Methods: We used data from a multisite randomized trial...

Cardiovascular risk in an HIV-infected population in India

Post Date: 
2017-07-03
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Heart Asia
Findings: HIV+ Indian patients who had cardiovascular disease at a younger age appear to be at imminent risk for morbidity.

Household food insecurity is associated with low interferon-gamma levels in pregnant Indian women

Post Date: 
2017-07-01
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International Journal of Tuberculosis and Lung Disease
Objective: To determine the association between household food insecurity and interferon-gamma (IFN-γ) levels in pregnancy. Design: Pregnant women in India were administered the Household Food Insecurity Access Scale (HFIAS) questionnaire and underwent an IFN-γ release assay...

Vitamin A and D deficiencies associated with incident tuberculosis in HIV-infected patients initiating antiretroviral therapy in multinational case-cohort study

Post Date: 
2017-07-01
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Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes
Introduction: Numerous micronutrients have immunomodulatory roles that may influence risk of tuberculosis (TB), but the association between baseline micronutrient deficiencies and incident TB after antiretroviral therapy (ART) initiation in HIV-infected individuals is not well characterized...

Maternal syphilis: An independent risk factor for mother to infant human immunodeficiency virus transmission

Post Date: 
2017-06-15
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Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Abstract Syphilis is associated with increased human immunodeficiency virus acquisition and sexual transmission; we examined impact on human immunodeficiency virus mother-to-child transmission among mother-infant pairs enrolled in the India Six-Week Extended-Dose Nevirapine study...

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