Dr. Jeanie Park is the first recipient of the John McKay Fellowship award.

For more information about Dr. Park, please see her resume (download PDF).

Project:
Funded on July 26, 2007

Summary:
Dr. Jeanie Park has developed and mastered a technique that measures sympathetic activity in nervous fibers in the legs of patients with kidney disease. Using this technique, she is capable of determining the contribution of sympathetic activity to the maintenance of blood pressure in these patients.  One of her main projects is to determine the effects of exercise during dialysis on sympathetic nerve activity and blood pressure in patients with this condition.

Update:
During her fellowship, Dr. Park found that patients with renal disease had an exaggerated increase in blood pressure during physical activity that could lead to exercise intolerance and increased risk of cardiovascular events.

She has continued her research in this area as an assistant professor of medicine within the Renal Division at Emory University.  Specifically, Dr. Park has been studying the increase in blood pressure that occurs in response to exercise.  She showed that this response is exaggerated in patients with end-stage renal disease.  Currently she is trying to find the underlying cause, which could be due to abnormalities in the sympathetic nervous system (the system that mediates the “fight or flight” response) or blood vessel wall, or due to cell injury from oxidants.  She has identified a naturally occuring nutrient, tetrahydrobiopterin, which may be able to ameliorate some of these abnormalities.  Her work is funded by the American Heart Association, Amgen Junior Faculty Award and Atlanta Research and Education Foundation.