Paras Karmacharya, MD, MS, is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology, Department of Medicine, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and leads the psoriatic arthritis (PsA) and spondyloarthritis clinical and research program at VUMC.
He is part of the Psoriatic Arthritis Research Consortium (PARC), which includes five PsA-dedicated clinics in the U.S. aimed at improving patient-centered care and advancing personalized medicine in PsA. The mission of his clinical and research program is to improve outcomes in PsA and spondyloarthritis by developing better treatment strategies and to understand the factors leading to the development of PsA and spondyloarthritis enabling early intervention.
Dr. Karmacharya seeks to combine traditional epidemiology, bioinformatics, and human genomics with a goal of leading patient-centered, pragmatic research in real-world PsA patients and advancing personalized medicine in PsA. As a result of his post-doctoral musculoskeletal research training and Master of Science training in Clinical and Translational Sciences at the Mayo Clinic, he is proficient in the use of large databases, designing and performing longitudinal studies with primary data sources, and outlining clinical and treatment heterogeneity in different patient subgroups using machine learning methods.
He received the Medical and Pediatric Resident Research Award as a resident and the Philip S. Hench Award 2020 for Outstanding Achievement as a Rheumatology fellow. He has received research grants from Spondyloarthritis Research and Treatment Network (SPARTAN), Group for Research and Assessment of Psoriasis and Psoriatic Arthritis (GRAPPA), and Assessment of spondyloarthritis international society (ASAS), and Rheumatology Research Foundation (RRF Scientist Development Award) to understand heterogeneity in spondyloarthritis, associated comorbidities, and their effect on long-term outcomes.