Daniel E Freedberg, MD

Dr. Freedberg graduated from Harvard Medical School and completed his residency and fellowship training at Columbia University. He received a Master's degree in biostatistics from Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. Dr. Freedberg's research focuses on the use of acid suppression medications, Clostridium difficile infection, and the gastrointestinal microbiome. Current projects include studies of how acid suppression medications alter the colonic microbiome and of how alterations in the gastrointestinal flora predispose patients to Clostridium difficile and other infections during periods of critical illness. His research is funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Gastroenterological Association.
Dr. Freedberg is a clinical and translational investigator focused on the relationship between the gastrointestinal microbiome and infections, both enteric and non-enteric. He is a graduate of Harvard Medical School and the Mailman School of Public Health and trained in medicine and gastroenterology at Columbia University Medical Center. He is the past recipient of an American Gastroenterological Association (AGA) Research Scholar Award and has received funding from the NIH/NIDDK, Irving Institute (Columbia's CTSA), and the Department of Defense. His work has been published in leading journals across disciplines: Gastroenterology, Clinical Infectious Disease, Intensive Care Medicine, JAMA Internal Medicine, and Nature. Currently, he focuses on the gastrointestinal microbiome in the intensive care unit (ICU). He has built large ICU cohorts containing longitudinal clinical data, serial rectal swabs, other biosamples, and clinical outcomes data. These samples and data have been collected to understand the dynamic changes that take place within the gastrointestinal microbiome during critical illness and to ask how these changes may impact risk for ICU-acquired infections. His past studies in this area show the importance of colonizing pathogens such as C. difficile and vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus (VRE) as determinants not only of the patient's own health but of outcomes for patients who share the same hospital environment. Ongoing research tests interventions seeking to improve the resistance of the native gut microbiota against pathogens, with a goal of preventing colonization and downstream infection in the ICU.