BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Dr. Malow received her B.S. degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, IL in 1984 and her M.D. from Northwestern University Medical School in Chicago just two years later, having participated in a special six-year honors program in medical education.

After a year spent as a research associate at Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains, NY through affiliation with the department of Neurology at Cornell University, Malow did her internship in Medicine at Beth Israel Medical Center, New York, NY from 1987-88. Her residency in the Harvard-Longwood Neurological Training Program in Boston, MA from 1988-91 was followed by a fellowship in the EEG Laboratory of the Epilepsy Research Branch of the NIH in Bethesda, MD from 1991-94.

In 1995 she received a Clinical Investigator Development Award from the NIH while on faculty as assistant professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where she completed an M.S. degree in Clinical Research Design and Statistical Analysis in 1997.

Prior to joining the faculty at Vanderbilt, Malow was a tenured associate professor of Neurology at the University of Michigan and director of the Sleep Medicine Fellowship Program and the General Clinical Research Center Sleep Program.

She is board certified in both Clinical Neurophysiology and Sleep Medicine, and serves as an editorial board member and ad hoc reviewer for a number of professional journals.

RESEARCH INTERESTS

The focus of my research program is the overlap of sleep and neurological disorders, including epilepsy and autism. My laboratory's active projects include the effects of treating sleep disorders on epilepsy, the relationship of epileptic seizures and interictal epileptiform discharges to sleep, and the effects of anti-epileptic drugs and vagus nerve stimulation on sleep. I serve as principal investigator on a NIH/NINDS Multi-center Pilot Clinical Trial (RO1) examining the effects of treating obstructive sleep apnea on seizure frequency, daytime sleepiness, and health-related quality of life.
I have also received funding from Vanderbilt and the National Alliance for Autism Research to define insomnia in children with autism spectrum disorders, using a variety of sleep study, survey, and genetic measures. Our goal is to ameliorate daytime behaviors in these children by improving sleep.

As director of the Vanderbilt Sleep Disorders Center and of the General Clinical Research Center Sleep Core, my goal is to foster multidisciplinary collaborations examining the relationship of sleep and sleep disorders to a variety of neurological, medical, and psychiatric disorders.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Articles in peer-reviewed journals:

Malow BA, McGrew SG, Harvey M, Henderson LM, Stone WL. Impact of treating sleep apnea in a child with autism spectrum disorder. Pediatric Neurology (in press).

Malow BA, Passaro E, Milling C, Minecan D, Levy K. Sleep deprivation does not affect seizure frequency during inpatient video-EEG monitoring. Neurology 59:1371-1374, 2002.

Malow BA, Edwards JC, Marzec ML, Sagher O, Ross DR, Fromes GA. Vagus nerve stimulation reduces daytime sleepiness in epilepsy patients. Neurology 57: 879-884, 2001.

Malow BA, Edwards JC, Marzec ML, Sagher O, Fromes GA. Effects of vagus nerve stimulation on respiration during sleep: A pilot study. Neurology 55: 1450-1454, 2000 (expedited publication).

Books:
Bazil C, Malow BA, Sammaritano M, Eds, Sleep and Epilepsy: The Clinical Spectrum. Elsevier, 2002.

Book Chapters:
Malow BA. Sleep Disorders, Epilepsy, and Autism. Mental Retardation and
Developmental Disabilities Research Reviews 2004;10(2):122-5.

Malow BA. Sleep Deprivation and Epilepsy. Epilepsy Currents 2004; 4:193-5.

Malow BA and McGrew SG. Sleep in Autism Spectrum Disorders. In: Tuchman R, Rapin (eds). In: Autism: A neurological disorder of early brain development. Child Neurology Association (in press).