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Oral Medicine Resident Awarded Sjögren's Syndrome Foundation Fellowship

April 17, 2009

Dr. Paola Higham (GD'10), a first-year resident in Penn Dental Medicine's Oral Medicine postdoctoral program, has been awarded a 2009 Sjögren's Syndrome Foundation Fellowship grant; she is one of four recipients nationwide.

The Sjögren's Syndrome Foundation offers fellowships for medical, dental, and PhD students working on a semester or summer research project in Sjögren's Syndrome (SS), an autoimmune disease characterized by the destruction and dysfunction of exocrine glands. Significant complications in SS include xerostomia (dry mouth) and keratoconjunctivitis sicca (dry eyes).

Dr. Higham's clinical and research interests are the treatment of xerostomia and salivary gland abnormalities, including infectious and autoimmune disorders like SS.

Through this Fellowship, she will work with Dr. Andres Pinto, Assistant Professor of Oral Medicine-Clinician Educator, on a project exploring the longitudinal changes in oral health quality of life in patients diagnosed with SS and treated with therapy the increases salivary flow. This study will test prospectively the hypothesis that longitudinal variation in salivary flow induced by pharmacologic therapy is associated to changes in quality of life and oral health quality of life. A secondary aim is the assessment of clinically significant changes in salivary flow using subject-centered measures, which has potential application to future studies evaluating therapy for xerostomia.

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