Elif Oral, MD

Dr. Elif Oral is a professor in the Division of Metabolism, Endocrinology and Diabetes (MEND) at the University of Michigan. She completed her medical education in her home country of Turkey at the University of Istanbul. In 1996, she completed her residency in Internal Medicine at Sinai Hospital Detroit (Michigan). She then completed a fellowship in Endocrinology, Metabolism and Diabetes at the National Institute of Health, where she also chose to stay as a Senior Fellow under the mentorship of Drs SimeonTaylor and Phillip Gorden in in the Diabetes Branch of NIDDK.

Since joining the University of Michigan in 2002 as an Assistant Professor of Medicine, along with her regular faculty responsibilities, Dr. Oral also completed a Masters of Science Degree in Clinical Research Design and Biostatistics at the School of Public Health. Her clinical interests are in insulin resistance, obesity, lipid disorders, and diabetes.

Dr Oral's research focuses on the importance of adipocytes in human metabolism and adipocyte hormones such as leptin. She is best known for her work showing the remarkable efficacy of leptin in rare lipodystrophy syndromes. Metreleptin received approval by the FDA (2014) and EMA (2016) as a treatment for lipodystrophy owing to a large part to her original vision and work. These studies provided the basis for her current work with three big goals: identification of novel metabolic diseases, discovery of new disease mechanisms and finding treatments for patients afflicted with these disorders.

In addition to her roles as physician, educator, and researcher, Dr Oral is also the director of two programs at MEND: Atypical Diabetes Program and Obesity and Metabolic Disorders Program. She directed the Post-Bariatric Surgery Care Program from 2012 to 2021 and continues to conduct research on the cohort of patients who had bariatric surgery performed in the Michigan Bariatric Surgery program.

University of Michigan Health participates with most health insurance plans.

Lipodystrophy, obesity, lipid metabolism, physiological roles of leptin, nonalcoholic steatohepatitis