Interpreting Common Lab Tests for Mitochondrial Disease

Mark Korson graduated from the University of Toronto medical school and completed his pediatric residency nearby at The Hospital for Sick Children.  He came to Boston to do a fellowship in genetics and metabolism at Children's Hospital.  Following that, he directed the Metabolism Clinic at Children's until 2000, transferring then to Tufts Medical Center's Floating Hospital for Children.  He is currently the Director of the Metabolism Service and an Associate Professor of Pediatrics at Tufts University School of Medicine.

Besides clinical medicine, a key focus for Dr. Korson is education.  He is concerned about the growing crisis in metabolic health care due to the shortage of clinicians available to treat this community.  To complicate this situation, there are too few people entering this subspecialty.  In the fall of 2007, Dr. Korson launched the Metabolic Outreach Service, for which he has travelled on a regular basis to five teaching hospitals in the northeastern US where there is no on-site metabolic service.  The goal is to provide educational and consultative support so that non-metabolic clinicians can learn how to participate more in the diagnosis and management of patients with metabolic disease.

A component of this effort is the Patient-As-Teacher Project, which engages patients and family members to participate actively in the teaching of medical students, house-staff, primary care providers and specialists.  The Outreach Service is funded by a consortium of corporate and disease foundation sponsors.

In addition, Dr. Korson co-directs the North American Metabolic Academy, a one-week intensive course about metabolic disease for genetic and metabolic trainees.  NAMA is sponsored by the SIMD, the Society for Inherited Metabolic Diseases.