Kevin Hackshaw, M.D.

Kevin Hackshaw, M.D., is an associate professor and chief of the Division of Rheumatology in the Department of Internal Medicine.

Hackshaw is pleased to return to the state of Texas and is excited about the opportunities offered at The University of Texas at Austin and Dell Medical School. A native of Brooklyn, New York, he left NYC after graduating from Brooklyn College to attend Baylor College of Medicine. After four years in Houston, he returned to New York and trained in internal medicine at Harlem Hospital Center (Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons).

After three years of internal medicine, he served a year as chief resident at Harlem and then relocated for three years as a clinical research fellow in rheumatology at University of Colorado Health Sciences Center. His research focus in Denver was membrane biochemistry, and his initial areas of research interest involved focus on fatty acid metabolism in autoimmune murine models.

After completing his rheumatology fellowship, he accepted a faculty position at The Ohio State University in Columbus, joining the faculty in 1990. His basic research involved fatty acid membrane composition as it relates to promoting inflammation; molecular cloning and characterization of mouse acidic fibroblast growth factors; and evaluation of neurotrophins in experimental pain models with a specific focus on fibroblast growth factors. These studies were conducted over nearly two decades and supported by multiple National Institutes of Health, private foundation and pharmaceutical support.

Following these studies, Hackshaw evolved from utilizing experimental pain models to the human analogues of neuropathic pain, for which fibromyalgia is the prototypical disorder. His current NIH proposal seeks to develop reliable biomarkers that can be utilized to identify and characterize patients with fibromyalgia and hopefully provide a roadmap for identifying targeted therapies for this highly common but poorly understood disorder.

Hackshaw’s specialty interests are fibromyalgia, chronic pain, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus and vasculitis. His research interests center around the mechanisms of neurotrophins in propagating chronic pain states.