Shama U Rao

Research Interest/Area

Orthopaedics

Research

I am working on 3 studies. “A clinico-radiological study of the spinal manifestations of the Ossified ligamentum flavum (OLF) in fluorosis endemic areas of the Karnataka and assessment of outcomes in surgically treated patients” is a retro-prospective study aims to study the prevalence of OLF, the clinical and radiological presentation and to observe the surgical outcomes in patients presenting to Yenepoya hospital with degenerative disc disease, “Identification of the molecular mechanism of degenerative disc disease using high-resolution mass spectrometry” is a quasi-experimental study aims to identify altered proteins and metabolites from disc material in age-associated degenerative disc disease using quantitative mass spectrometry approach, differentially expressed proteins and metabolites from ligamentum flavum (LF) in age-associated degenerative disc disease using quantitative mass spectrometry approach and to functionally validate the differentially regulated proteins and metabolites by western blotting/ targeted proteomics/ targeted metabolomics and “The role of serum microRNAs and inflammatory mediators in intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) and their value as biomarkers for early detection of intervertebral disc degeneration (IDD) is a quasi-experimental study aiming to identify and validate the altered miRNAs from disc material in IDD using global analysis and qRT-PCR, to find and validate the altered miRNAs present in the serum samples obtained from the IDD patients by using global analysis and qRT-PCR, to find/confirm presence of inflammatory mediators in IDD patients, to correlate the serum miRNAs and inflammatory mediators with different grades of disc degeneration along with the disc miRNAs and to determine the correlations between the miRNAs and inflammatory markers from the serum and disc samples obtained from the same patient.