Dr. Leila Kheirandish-Gozal, MD

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Get to know Pediatric Sleep Medicine Specialist Dr. Leila Kheirandish-Gozal, who serves patients in Columbia, Missouri.

Dr. Kheirandish-Gozal is a tenured and endowed Professor of Pediatrics and Director of the Child Health Research Institute (CHRI) at the University of Missouri, Columbia. She is one of the most celebrated pediatric sleep medicine experts in the world, ranking No. 4 among specialists in 2018.

A native of Syria, she earned her medical degree from the University of Damascus School of Medicine in 2000. After relocating to the United States, she completed her fellowship in pediatric sleep medicine at the University of Louisville School of Medicine in 2005. Later, she completed her Master of Science degree (MSc) in Clinical Investigation and Public Health from the University of Louisville School of Public Health in 2012.

Continuously advancing her efforts, Dr. Kheirandish-Gozal is an active member of the Sleep Research Society, the American Thoracic Society, the American Pediatric Society, the Iranian Sleep Society, the Illinois Sleep Society, the Society for Pediatric Research, the Society for Behavioral Sleep Medicine, the International Pediatric Sleep Association, the European Sleep Research Society, and the Spanish Sleep Society.

An enthusiastic researcher, her research focus is both on mechanisms and biomarkers which may mediate the strong correlation between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and vascular dysfunction. She was instrumental in the development of non-invasive techniques that enable today’s assessments of endothelial function as a marker of cardiovascular risk in children. 

Furthermore, Dr. Kheirandish-Gozal described the presence of divergent phenotypes of vascular dysfunction in children with similar OSA severity, and she provided a conceptual framework that attempted to assign a role to “endothelial repair processes” as being involved in such divergent phenotypes.

In her breakthrough work in the OSA field, she revealed that differences in the recruitment and mobilization of endothelial progenitor cells and the chemokines that promote such mobilization accounted for a substantial proportion of the variance in endothelial function in children with OSA.

Sleep medicine is a medical specialty or subspecialty devoted to the diagnosis and therapy of sleep disturbances and disorders. From the middle of the 20th century, research has provided increasing knowledge and answered many questions about sleep-wake functioning. Sleep medicine specialists are trained to diagnose, treat, and manage various types of sleep disorders.

Among her most notable achievements, Dr. Kheirandish-Gozal has been the recipient of the Order of Extraordinary Merit Award (2011), Professional Woman of the Year Award (2011), Dean’s Citation Award (2012), and Marquis Who’s Who in America Award (2012, 2013).

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