Dr. Sonali Malhotra earned her medical degree from the Indira Gandhi Medical College, India and completed residency in Pediatrics from Lincoln Medical Center, New York. She then completed a subspecialty Pediatric Endocrinology fellowship at the Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York . Her deep-seated interest to enhance understanding of the biological underpinnings of obesity and its management , led her to pursue an advanced fellowship training in Obesity Medicine and Clinical Nutrition at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston.
She has always had a profound commitment to the field of obesity, particularly pediatric and adolescent obesity and development of precision medicine practices.
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Mass General Digestive Healthcare Center: Weight Center
50 Staniford St.
4th Floor
Boston, MA 02114
Phone: 617-726-4400
Medical Education
American Board Certifications
Dr. Malhotra has worked on investigating the role of important receptors named “Toll like receptor 2 and 4” (TLR-2 and TLR-4) in the pathogenesis of obesity, insulin resistance, and other obesity related complications in children and adolescents. The results from this study will provide crucial information about the underlying mechanism of how the inflammatory response is triggered in childhood obesity, and how it can lead to complications of childhood obesity.
She is currently collaborating with the Rhythm pharmaceuticals in a study for Genetic Testing and Phenotypic Characterization of Severely Obese Pediatric and Adult Volunteers, the objective of which is to identify individuals with severe, early onset morbid obesity (EOMO), who are suspected to have mutations in the POMC, PCSK1 or LepR gene, leading to clinical presentation of Melanocortin 4 (MC4R) pathway deficiency obesity.
Other areas of her research include elucidating anti-neoplastic treatment effectiveness in cancer patients with concomitant obesity.
Dr. Malhotra published the pioneer study examining the effects of current marijuana use on thyroid function and autoimmunity in human subjects. The study reported that current marijuana use, in short term, is associated with lower levels of thyroid stimulating hormone (TSH), which is the key regulatory hormone controlling the thyroid gland. In lines with these pivotal findings several studies are in process of further investigating the prospective effects of marijuana use on the various other hormonal axes in humans.
Malhotra S, Heptulla RA, Homel P, Motaghedi R: Effect of Marijuana Use on Thyroid Function and Autoimmunity. Thyroid: official journal of the American Thyroid Association 2017, 27(2):167-173.
Ghanny BA, Malhotra S, Kumta S, Kazachkova I, Homel P, Jacobson-Dickman E, Motaghedi R. Should children with isolated premature adrenarche be routinely evaluated for non-classical congenital adrenal hyperplasia? J Pediatr Endocrinol Metab. 2015 Dec 7
