Title:

Associate Director,
Slone Epidemiology Center

Professor of Epidemiology,
Boston University Schools of Public Health

Education:

M.S., 1979, Harvard School of Public Health
Sc.D., 1983, Harvard School of Public Health

Research Interests:

David Kaufman is Professor of Epidemiology at the Boston University School of Public Health. He obtained his M.S. and Sc.D. in Epidemiology from Harvard School of Public Health. In 1975 he joined the newly created Drug Epidemiology Unit (now the Slone Epidemiology Center ) as a Research Associate. His early career as an epidemiologist at the DEU was primarily spent in studies of drugs and other factors in relation to cancer, heart disease, and various other conditions. Together with Drs. Slone, Shapiro, and Lynn Rosenberg, he participated in the development of Case-Control Surveillance. In the 1980s, Dr. Kaufman was co-investigator of the International Agranulocytosis and Aplastic Anemia Study, a pioneering effort in the evaluation of these extremely rare but often drug-induced blood dyscrasias that was conducted in seven countries with several hundred cases enrolled. He has directed studies of aplastic anemia in Thailand and the United States. The Thai study is the largest epidemiological investigation of aplastic anemia that has been conducted, with over 500 cases and 2200 controls. Dr. Kaufman pursued his interest in rare drug induced diseases as principal investigator of an international study of Stevens-Johnson syndrome and toxic epidermal necrolysis conducted in four countries in Europe, and a study of anaphylaxis conducted in Spain, Hungary, India, and Sweden. Other major activities have included an international study of analgesics in relation to upper gastrointestinal bleeding and the National Analgesic Nephropathy Study, a multicenter study of end stage renal disease patients in three regions of the U.S. Dr. Kaufman worked closely with Allen Mitchell in the implementation of the Slone Survey, a U.S. population-based survey of medication use. He was principal investigator of a recently completed study that documented an inverse relationship between Oxalobacter formigenes, an oxalate metabolizing bacterium found in the colons of about 40% of the normal population, and calcium oxalate kidney stones. Dr. Kaufman currently directs the Patient Registries at Slone: Myeloma and MDS, a nationwide effort that follows patients with the two diseases through the course of their illness. He was Assistant Director of the Slone Epidemiology Unit from 1986 to 1997, and has been Associate Director since 1998.