Lakshminarayan Ranganath is a Consultant Chemical Pathologist and Honorary Senior Lecturer in the Department of Clinical Biochemistry and Metabolic Medicine in Liverpool. He is a metabolic physician with significant clinical responsibility. He is a co-founder, trustee and medical director of the Alkaptonuria (AKU) Society and is intimately involved in all AKU activities. He has co-authored 50 peer-reviewed publications (also on AKU) that include invited reviews and book chaptersin the Department of Clinical Biochemistry and Metabolic Medicine in Liverpool.
He has extensive experience in chemical pathology and general medicine with a specific interest in metabolic disorders, including endocrine, obesity/diabetes, electrolyte, lipid and bone disease. He is currently establishing an Adult Inborn Error of Metabolism Clinic in Liverpool as part of the North West Paediatric Partnership-Inborn Metabolic Disease Group strategy. Over the past seven years, he has been managing six patients with Alkaptonuria and is a founder and Medical Director of the Alkaptonuria Society, a national patient support organisation based in Liverpool.
Through the support of the Society, he plans to see all of the AKU patients in the UK and Ireland over the next three years. The department has a four-bed Metabolic Unit and a well-equipped clinical biochemistry laboratory with ICPMS/tandem mass spectrometer, Roche modular system, and expertise in routine and specialised assays including homogentisic acid and related products.
Clinical collaborators include Professor W D Fraser, an international expert in metabolic bone disease, Mr M MacCormack (Consultant ENT Surgeon, for the study of ears and hearing), Professor S Vinjamuri (Department of Nuclear Medicine, for isotope bone scan studies and PETCT scan for study of joint disease with a view to quantitation), Dr Martin Bree (Department of Ophthalmology, for the study of the eyes in AKU), and Professor R Moots (Consultant Rheumatologist, adviser on rheumatological aspects of AKU) .
Dr Ranganath was a speaker at the 4th International Workshop, presenting on his work for the Liverpool AKU Clinical Evaluation Study.
