We are very pleased to announce that Professor Qasim Aziz has kindly agreed to become a medical advisor to the HMSA. Professor Aziz is highly respected by the trustees and staff of the HMSA and of course by the other medical advisors, who are as equally pleased as we all are.
Professor Aziz has been assisting the HMSA and also researching the links between JHMS and gastrointestinal disorders. He is keen to assist people with HMS and actually sees a lot of our members as patients. I am sure that he will continue to prove to be a real asset to the HMSA and its members. I have copied his biography below for all of your information.
Professor Aziz has kindly written an article for the new revised edition of the adult booklet 'Living with Hypermobility Syndrome' which is due to be published soon. His article will also be included in the next newsletter due out mid to end of October.
But even more exciting news..Professor Aziz will be conducting a 'talk' at the next Residential Weekend which I am sure will be favourably received by us all.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank Professor Aziz for agreeing to join the HMSA Medical Advisors team.
BIOGRAPHY
Professor Aziz held the posts of Lecturer, Senior Lecturer and Professor of Gastroenterology at Hope Hospital, University of Manchester before moving to Barts and The London in December 2006. He currently holds the Chair in Neurogastroenterology and is the Director of the Wingate Institute of Neurogastroenterology.
His major research interest is to study mechanisms of gastrointestinal pain in health and disease. His work has also contributed to the current understanding of the brain processing of human gut sensation. He has described mechanisms of nerve sensitisation after gut injury or inflammation and the modulatory effect of psychological factors in pain perception. He has undertaken seminal research on mechanisms of symptoms in Non-Cardiac Chest Pain and Gastro-Oesophageal Reflux Disease.
His clinical interests include Functional Gastrointestinal Disorders such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome, Gastro-oesophageal Reflux Disease, Motility Disorders and GI complications of connective tissue and neurological diseases as well as diabetes. More recently he has developed a clinical and research interest in the gut manifestations of Joint Hypermobility Syndrome. He has access to state of the art GI physiological and novel neurophysiological techniques (to study brain-gut interactions) as well as autonomic function tests.
He currently holds the MRC Career Establishment Award and prior to that was an MRC Clinician Scientist. He was awarded the Sir Francis Avery Jones Research Gold Medal by the British Society of Gastroenterology in 1998, Young Investigator Award by the Functional Brain – Gut Group of The American Gastroenterology Association, in 1998 and the Janssen Award for Basic and Clinical Research by the American Gastroenterology Association in 2000.
Until recently he has held the post of Chairman of the Neuro-Gastroenterology Section of the British Society of Gastroenterology and is a member of the executive committee of the European Society of Neurogastroenterology and Motility and was a member of the ROME III committee for diagnostic criteria for Functional Gut Disorders. He is also a member of the Education Committee of the United European Gastroenterology Federation. He co-authored the BSG Irritable Bowel Syndrome guidelines in 2007. He has also co-authored numerous peer reviewed original articles and seminal reviews in the field of Neurogastroenterology and pioneered novel neurophysiological techniques for studying brain-gut interactions.
