Lydia Zablotska, MD, PhD, MPA

Salvatore Pablo Lucia Professor of Epidemiology and Public Health
Head, Environmental and Occupational Epidemiology
Area of Concentration
Department of Epidemiology & Biostatistics
+1 415 563-4602

Dr. Zablotska, MD, PhD, MPA is a Professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics in the School of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, where she serves as the Leader of the Occupational and Environmental Epidemiology Area of Concentration. Dr. Zablotska is a physician and epidemiologist with extensive training and publications in radiation epidemiology, biostatistics, and risk modeling. Her research activities have focused primarily on the examination of risks of radiation exposures in various occupational and environmental settings. Dr. Zablotska’s work has clarified our understanding of the effects of occupational radiation exposures on health risks of nuclear power industry workers and workers of the uranium fuel production cycle in various occupational cohorts from the U.S. and Canada.

As a Principal Investigator of the NCI-funded Chernobyl studies she published a number of important publications with tri-national investigative team which showed that exposures to ingested and inhaled radioactive iodines during childhood lead to increased risks of thyroid cancer and other thyroid diseases similar to risks from external radiation. Study findings redefined the emergency protocols for populations working or living around nuclear power plants and opened a new area of inquiry by showing that exposures to radioiodines increase not only the risks of thyroid cancer, but also of benign thyroid tumors such as follicular adenomas. Recently, the research conducted by Dr. Zablotska’s research group showed that the cleanup workers of the Chernobyl nuclear accident are at increased risk of incident chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) and reported possible links with somatic point mutations related to telomere length maintenance.

Dr. Zablotska serves as a Director of Epidemiology, Biostatistics and Population Health education in the medical school curriculum at UCSF and has received multiple institutional and national teaching and mentoring awards. She is a founder of the Early Stage Radiation Investigators Workshop conducted in conjunction with biennial meetings of the Conference on Radiation and Health.

Dr. Zablotska's complete profile is available here.

Publications

A Historical Survey of Key Epidemiological Studies of Ionizing Radiation Exposure.

Radiation research

Little MP, Bazyka D, Gonzalez AB, Brenner AV, Chumak VV, Cullings H, Daniels RD, French B, Grant E, Hamada N, Hauptmann M, Kendall GM, Laurier D, Lee C, Lee WJ, Linet MS, Mabuchi K, Morton LM, Muirhead CR, Preston DL, Rajaraman P, Richardson DB, Sakata R, Samet JM, Simon SL, Sugiyama H, Wakeford R, Zablotska LB

Prevalence of Thyroid Nodules in Residents of Ukraine Exposed as Children or Adolescents to Iodine-131 from the Chornobyl Accident.

VideoEndocrinology

Elizabeth Khaykin Cahoon, Eric Grimm, Kiyohiko Mabuchi, Jim Zhiming, Rui Zhang, Vladimir Drozdovitch, Maureen Hatch, Mark P. Little, Kamau O. Peters, Tetiana I. Bogdanova, Evgeniy Shelkovoy, Viktor M. Shpak, Galyna Terekhova, Galyna Zamotayeva, Ihor P. Pasteur, Sergii V. Masiuk, Mykola Chepurny, Lydia B. Zablotska, Robert McConnell, Patrick O’Kane, Mykola D. Tronko, Alina V. Brenner

The epidemiology of lung cancer following radiation exposure.

International journal of radiation biology

Zablotska LB, Richardson DB, Golden A, Pasqual E, Smith B, Rage E, Demers PA, Do M, Fenske N, Deffner V, Kreuzer M, Samet J, Bertke S, Kelly-Reif K, Schubauer-Berigan MK, Tomasek L, Wiggins C, Laurier D, Apostoaei I, Thomas BA, Simon SL, Hoffman FO, Boice JD, Dauer LT, Howard SC, Cohen SS, Mumma MT, Ellis ED, Eckerman KF, Leggett RW, Pawel DJ

Frailty trajectories in adult lung transplantation: A cohort study.

The Journal of heart and lung transplantation : the official publication of the International Society for Heart Transplantation

Venado A, McCulloch C, Greenland JR, Katz P, Soong A, Shrestha P, Hays S, Golden J, Shah R, Leard LE, Kleinhenz ME, Kukreja J, Zablotska L, Allen IE, Covinsky K, Blanc P, Singer JP

Iodine-131 and thyroid function: Ostroumova et al. respond.

Environmental health perspectives

Ostroumova E, Rozhko A, Hatch M, Furukawa K, Polyanskaya O, McConnell RJ, Nadyrov E, Petrenko S, Romanov G, Yauseyenka V, Drozdovitch V, Minenko V, Prokopovich A, Savasteeva I, Zablotska LB, Mabuchi K, Brenner AV

Comment on "dose-responses from multi-model inference for the non-cancer disease mortality of atomic bomb survivors" (Radiat. Environ. Biophys (2012) 51:165-178) by Schöllnberger et al.

Radiation and environmental biophysics

Little MP, Azizova TV, Bazyka D, Bouffler SD, Cardis E, Chekin S, Chumak VV, Cucinotta FA, de Vathaire F, Hall P, Harrison JD, Hildebrandt G, Ivanov V, Kashcheev VV, Klymenko SV, Laurent O, Ozasa K, Tapio S, Taylor AM, Tzoulaki I, Vandoolaeghe WL, Wakeford R, Zablotska L, Zhang W, Lipshultz SE

Systematic review and meta-analysis of circulatory disease from exposure to low-level ionizing radiation and estimates of potential population mortality risks.

Environmental health perspectives

Little MP, Azizova TV, Bazyka D, Bouffler SD, Cardis E, Chekin S, Chumak VV, Cucinotta FA, de Vathaire F, Hall P, Harrison JD, Hildebrandt G, Ivanov V, Kashcheev VV, Klymenko SV, Kreuzer M, Laurent O, Ozasa K, Schneider T, Tapio S, Taylor AM, Tzoulaki I, Vandoolaeghe WL, Wakeford R, Zablotska LB, Zhang W, Lipshultz SE

Autoimmune thyroiditis and exposure to iodine 131 in the Ukrainian cohort study of thyroid cancer and other thyroid diseases after the Chornobyl accident: results from the first screening cycle (1998-2000).

The Journal of clinical endocrinology and metabolism

Tronko MD, Brenner AV, Olijnyk VA, Robbins J, Epstein OV, McConnell RJ, Bogdanova TI, Fink DJ, Likhtarev IA, Lubin JH, Markov VV, Bouville AC, Terekhova GM, Zablotska LB, Shpak VM, Brill AB, Tereshchenko VP, Masnyk IJ, Ron E, Hatch M, Howe GR

A cohort study of thyroid cancer and other thyroid diseases after the Chornobyl accident: objectives, design and methods.

Radiation research

Stezhko VA, Buglova EE, Danilova LI, Drozd VM, Krysenko NA, Lesnikova NR, Minenko VF, Ostapenko VA, Petrenko SV, Polyanskaya ON, Rzheutski VA, Tronko MD, Bobylyova OO, Bogdanova TI, Ephstein OV, Kairo IA, Kostin OV, Likhtarev IA, Markov VV, Oliynik VA, Shpak VM, Tereshchenko VP, Zamotayeva GA, Beebe GW, Bouville AC, Brill AB, Burch JD, Fink DJ, Greenebaum E, Howe GR, Luckyanov NK, Masnyk IJ, McConnell RJ, Robbins J, Thomas TL, Voillequé PG, Zablotska LB