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Dr. Konkle joined Puget Sound Blood Center in September 2009. She has long standing research and clinical interests in hemostasis and thrombosis, particularly in clinical and translational research studies. She is a nationally and internationally recognized expert on the laboratory evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of patients with bleeding and clotting disorders. She has over 15 years of experience in special hemostasis laboratory supervision, previously at the University of Pennsylvania and at the Cardeza Foundation for Hematologic Research. She has assumed the role of Medical Director of the Blood Center’s Hemostasis Reference Laboratory with Dr. Arthur Thompson’s retirement. A major interest of hers is hemostasis clinical test development and use of hemostasis testing to support innovative clinical research.
Specific Research Interests:
Dr. Konkle has a long standing research interest in the pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment of HIT, an immune reaction to the heparin/platelet factor 4 (PF4) complex. Patients with HIT are at high risk of developing thrombosis which can have devastating consequences including loss of limb or life. Her group was one of several to report the high incidence of heparin/PF4 antibodies following cardiopulmonary bypass. In ongoing work, with collaborators at the University of Pennsylvania and Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, they are evaluating platelet biomarkers that may be predictive of HIT, as well as antibody evolution and specificity, and the relationship between heparin/PF4 antibody formation and atherosclerosis. Through this research they hope to improve testing for HIT and prediction of patients at higher risk so that treatment approaches can be modified.
Dr. Konkle’s recent research in this area relates to improved testing and pregnancy in women with VWD. Dr. Konkle’s laboratory evaluated the usefulness of platelet VWF testing in the diagnosis of older patients whose plasma values had normalized with age, and in patients with a positive family history of VWD, but with normal or borderline testing. They hypothesized that platelet VWF would not increase with age, as is true of plasma VWF levels. However, they found that platelet VWF testing did not aid the diagnostic evaluation in this setting. They are currently evaluating changes in VWF levels during pregnancy and post-partum in women with type 1 VWD, and in collaboration with Dr. Andra James at Duke University, are evaluating risk factor for post-partum hemorrhage in women with VWD. With colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania and the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, she has evaluated the Universal Data Collection database, particularly evaluating severe VWD in that database and comparing loss of joint ROM in patients with severe VWD compared to moderate hemophilia A with similar FVIII levels.
Dr. Konkle has a long-standing interest in the evaluation of new treatments for bleeding and clotting disorders and has participated in multiple trials. She was a lead investigator on the trial evaluating rFVIIa as secondary prophylaxis in patients with hemophilia and inhibitors and frequent bleeding. She was the PI from the University of Pennsylvania for the NHLBI-sponsored clinical trial network (CTN) in Transfusion Medicine and Hemostasis and is a co-investigator from Puget Sound Blood Center’s site. In the TMH CTN she serves on protocol leadership teams for data collection from an observational study in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia and in a study of rituximab in congenital hemophilia patients with inhibitors.
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