Leorey Saligan

Leorey N. Saligan, Ph.D., R.N., C.R.N.P., is a Assistant Clinical Investigator in the National Institute of Nursing Research (NINR) of the United States National Institutes of Health.

His research interests center around fatigue, particularly fatigue experienced by cancer patients as a result of his parents both being diagnosed with cancer. He has developed an exercise intervention geared to improve aerobic metabolism of patients in order to potentially reduce oxidative stress, inflammation, and fatigue.

Dr Saligan is one of the Associate Investigators assigned to the NIH Post-Infectious ME/CFS Study.

Dr Saligan serves on the editorial board of the journal, Fatigue: Biomedicine, Health & Behavior, published on behalf of the IACFS/ME.

Controversy
In a very small uncontrolled study (n = 9) exploring the relationship between gene expression and pain catastrophizing in fibromyalgia, Saligan and his co-authors used a score of 16 on the Pain Catastrophizing Scale as the threshold for determination of "high catastrophizing". That is in stark contrast with the threshold of 30 recommended by the scale's creators to indicate a "clinically relevant level of catastrophizing," and a mean score for 851 injured workers was 20.90. Even the high catastrophizing subgroup (n = 5) in the study averaged a pain catastrophizing score of only 23.6, well below the recommended threshold. The authors concluded that "specific physiological pathways may possibly delineate pain and catastrophizing mechanisms."

ME/CFS Common Data Element (CDE) Project
Member on both the Fatigue Working Group and the Pain Working Group of the Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome Common Data Element (CDE) Project sponsored by the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Notable studies

 * 2017, Public Review - Draft of Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (ME/CFS) Common Data Elements (CDE); Fatigue Subgroup Materials - (Full Text)
 * 2016, Different Phenotyping Approaches Lead to Dissimilar Biologic Profiles in Men With Chronic Fatigue After Radiation Therapy

Editorial

 * Editorial - Understanding cancer-related fatigue: advancing the science, Full text by Michael Renner and Leorey N. Saligan

Talks and interviews

 * 2015, Is Medical Research for You? Meet Leorey Saligan, principal investigator in the Symptom Management Branch at the National Institutes of Health. Leorey’s research involves looking at blood samples from patients who have undergone cancer therapy and contributes to figuring out why cancer treatments cause fatigue
 * Interviewed by Reuters on non-drug options to treat cancer-related fatigue
 * Featured on Oncology Nursing Society’s podcast on the effects of aerobic exercise during cancer therapy
 * Selected as a featured scientist for a LabTV segment: “Curious about fatigue related to cancer therapy”
 * Featured Scientist on NIH Director’s (Dr. Francis Collins) September 10th blog

Online presence

 * PubMed
 * Google scholar
 * Twitter
 * Facebook
 * Website
 * YouTube


 * Address:
 * Symptom Biology Unit
 * NINR
 * Building 3, Room 5E14
 * 3 Center Drive
 * Bethesda, MD 20892
 * United States


 * Phone: 301-451-1685
 * Email: saliganl@mail.nih.gov

Learn more

 * NIH - Leorey Saligan
 * Energized by Fatigue
 * Systemic bias continues at NIH - MEAdvocacy