Amita Aggarwal (born 1960) is an Indian clinical immunologist, rheumatologist and a Professor and Head at the Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology of the

Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences Sanjay Gandhi Postgraduate Institute of Medical Sciences is a medical Institute under the State Legislature Act in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, south of Hazratganj on Raebareli Road. It was established in 1983 and is named after Sanjay Gandhi. Th ...

, Lucknow. Known for her studies in autoimmune

rheumatic diseases Rheumatism or rheumatic disorders are conditions causing chronic pain, chronic, often intermittent pain affecting the joints or connective tissue. Rheumatism does not designate any specific disorder, but covers at least 200 different conditions, ...

, Aggarwal is a recipient of the Shakuntala Amir Chand Award of the Indian Council of Medical Research and an elected fellow of the

National Academy of Sciences, India The National Academy of Sciences, India, established in 1930, is the oldest science academy in India. It is located in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Prof. Meghnad Saha was the founder president. Fellows *Suddhasatwa Basu * Sudha Bhattacharya * Ch ...

National Academy of Medical Sciences National Academy of Medical Sciences (India), better known by its acronym, NAMS, is a nodal agency under the Government of India, which acts as an advisory body to the Government in matters related to National Health Policy and Planning and as a ...

and the

. The

Department of Biotechnology The Department of Biotechnology (DBT) is an Indian government department, under the Ministry of Science and Technology responsible for administrating development and commercialisation in the field of modern biology and biotechnology in India. It ...

of the Government of India awarded her the

National Bioscience Award for Career Development The National Bio-science Award for Career Development or N-BIOS Prize is an Indian science award for recognizing excellence and promoting research in bio-sciences disciplines. It was instituted in 1999 by the Department of Biotechnology of the Gov ...

, one of the highest Indian science awards, for her contributions to biosciences in 2004.

Biography

Amita Aggarwal, born in 1960, earned her medical degree of MBBS as well as a post-graduate degree (MD in Internal Medicine) from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi and secured the degree of DM in Clinical Immunology from

(SGPGI). Her career started at SGPGI as a member of faculty in 1996 and she holds the position of a Professor and Head at the Department of Clinical Immunology and Rheumatology. In between, she received advanced training in Rheumatology at the

Royal Melbourne Hospital The Royal Melbourne Hospital (RMH), located in Parkville, Victoria, an inner suburb of Melbourne, is one of Australia's leading public hospitals. It is a major teaching hospital for tertiary health care with a reputation in clinical research. Th ...

in 1995 on an APLAR fellowship and at the University of Oklahoma Health Science Center on a research associateship from the

. In addition, she has trained at the

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is the national public health agency of the United States. It is a United States federal agency, under the Department of Health and Human Services, and is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgi ...

, Atlanta, USA.

Legacy

Aggarwal, who is known for her research in the field of autoimmune

, especially the pathogenesis of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). She described that the phenotype of JIA in Indian patients is different from that elsewhere, and that enthesitis-related arthritis (ERA) is the most common. She has contributed significantly to understanding the pathogenesis of ERA, such as the role of macrophages and T cells, various cytokines and gut microbiome. Besides JIA, she has made seminal contributions in the area of nephritis in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). She is currently coordinating a multi-institutional network project on SLE to understand the diversity of SLE across India. She has contributed immensely to developing manpower for Rheumatology by training nearly 100 students who are now spread across India. She has been holding a National Workshop on Autoantibodies to train Indian physicians in the laboratory diagnostics of autoimmune disease. She heads the regional diagnostic centre of the Foundation for Primary Immunodeficiency Diseases (FPID), an international organization established to combat primary immunodeficiencies (PID). She is one of the resource persons for PID facilities in India. She has held the office of the President of the Indian Rheumatology Association. She was also the national coordinator for India of the Paediatric Rheumatology International Trials Organization.

Awards and honors

Aggarwal received the Shakuntala Amir Chand Prize of the Indian Council of Medical Research in 1998, for her studies in auto-immune rheumatic diseases and the ICMR honored her again in 2001 with the Dr. Kamala Menon Award. The

of the Government of India awarded her the

, one of the highest Indian science awards in 2004. The award orations delivered by her include the Zydus Oration of the Indian Association of Rheumatology (2002), Dr. Coelho Memorial Lecturer (2005) of the Association of Physicians of India and the Kshanika Oration (2005) of ICMR. The

elected her as a fellow in 2013 and she received the elected fellowship of the

in 2014.

Selected bibliography

* * * * * *

Biography

Legacy

Awards and honors

Selected bibliography

See also

Notes

References

Further reading