UKZN lecturer on editorial board of international medical journal

BY: .

A Senior Lecturer in Biochemistry at the School of Life Sciences, Dr Shahidul Islam, has been inducted as a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Translational Internal Medicine (JTIM) for a period of four years.

JTIM, designed by Wolters Kluwer and Spring Media Publishing and launched last year, publishes articles on all aspects of internal medicine focusing on translational application, including respiratory diseases, circulatory diseases, gastroenterology, urinary diseases, haematology, kidney diseases and endocrinology, among others.

Spring Media Publishing, which has its headquarters in Hong Kong, cooperates with more than 40 well known international institutes and associations such as the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Neurology, and the Society of Critical Medicine.  

Apart from this recent appointment, Islam is also a Review Editor of the Swiss journal Frontiers in Experimental Pharmacology and Drug Discovery; a Lead Guest Editor of the American journal Experimental Diabetes Research, a member of the Editorial Boards of the World Journal of Diabetes published from Republic of China and the Journal of Biochemical and Pharmacological Research headquartered in the United States.

Based at the School of Life Sciences, the focus of Islam’s current research is on Diabetes mellitus, particularly on type 2 diabetes.

‘We are not only developing novel and alternative animal models of type 2 diabetes but also conducting intervention trials and underlying mechanisms of actions of several functional and medicinal foods, natural and artificial sugar substitutes, and medicinal plant extracts, which have no or less side effects compared to chemical originated drugs,’ said Islam.

 Because of the rapidly changing pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes, Islam and his team have a plan to develop several models of which the first was published in an international pharmacology journal, Pharmacological Reports, on 2012. The development of other models of type 2 diabetes is currently underway.

Islam is also an active member of a number of local professional organisations including Diabetes South Africa (DSA), Nutrition Society South Africa (NSSA) and recently joined the Society for the Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes South Africa (SEMDSA).

As a potential diabetes researcher, Islam offers complementary consultation to diabetes sufferers.

He can be contacted on e-mail at islamd@ukzn.ac.za and by phone at 031-2608717 or 079- 5748178.

* The latest issue of the Journal of Translational Internal Medicine, published on 31 March, is available online at: www.intern-med.com.