Yewande Odeyemi, M.B.B.S.

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SUMMARY

The research of Yewande Odeyemi, M.B.B.S., focuses on improving the care and outcomes of patients hospitalized with acute pulmonary inflammation, including those with community acquired pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome. The goal of Dr. Odeyemi's research is to individualize care using a precision medicine approach to:

• Identify distinct subgroups that respond differently to treatment.
• Understand how to precisely measure pulmonary inflammation in clinical practice.
• Understand how to effectively control harmful inflammation in community acquired pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome by individualizing the timing, dosing and duration of corticosteroids and other anti-inflammatory drugs.

Focus areas

• Predicting clinical deterioration in hospitalized patients with community acquired pneumonia. Dr. Odeyemi and her colleagues are interested in identifying hospitalized patients with community acquired pneumonia at risk of experiencing clinical deterioration. They use advanced statistical and machine learning methods with the goal of preventing illness progression through intensive monitoring and treatment.
• Identifying corticosteroid-responsive phenotypes in hospitalized patients with community acquired pneumonia. Dr. Odeyemi is developing an individual treatment rule for corticosteroid use in patients with community acquired pneumonia through advanced statistical and machine learning methods. The goal of this research is to identify patients in whom the benefits of adjunct corticosteroid treatment would outweigh the potential harm.
• Individualizing corticosteroid therapy in community acquired pneumonia. Dr. Odeyemi's research team designed a novel approach to individualizing corticosteroid therapy in COVID-19 infection using biomarkers to measure inflammation. This unique approach decreased exposure to corticosteroids with improvement in clinical outcomes in a feasibility trial. The team is working on strategies to improve this approach.
• Improving antibiotic therapy in community acquired pneumonia. Dr. Odeyemi's team is evaluating the effectiveness of common antibiotic regimens in real-world settings to enhance the quality and relevance of available evidence. This work aims to inform new guidelines on community acquired pneumonia.

Significance to patient care

Pneumonia is still the top cause of serious illness and death from infection around the world, even though there are vaccines, antibiotics and other treatments to help. Corticosteroids can help reduce the harmful inflammation that is common with pneumonia, but it's still unclear which patients should get them, when to give them and how much to use. Dr. Odeyemi's research is working to change that. Her team is trying to find the best way to give corticosteroids — making sure the right patient gets the right dose at the right time. At the same time, the team also is studying how well commonly used antibiotics work in real-life situations.

Professional highlights

• Robert A. Winn Diversity in Clinical Trials Career Development Award, Bristol Meyers Squibb Foundation, 2022-2024.