AAHPO mourns the passing of one of our great Armenian-American physicians, Avedis Khachadurian. Avedis was the consummate physician whose contributions to our knowledge of lipid metabolism led to monumental insights and to an entirely new field of medical therapeutics. Dr. Khachadurian served as the founding director of the Division of Endocrinology at Rutgers Medical School. For generations of medical students, Dr. Khachadurian taught the value of a rigorous approach to medical inquiry and superior patient care. He always insisted that we delve as deeply as possible into the problem at hand. He set the highest standards of academic inquiry and medical care. We celebrate a man who was respected not only by the Armenian community but also by all who valued academic excellence, biomedical investigation, and patient care. AAHPO extends our sympathy to his family and his friends.
— AAHPO Board Member John Bilezikian, MD, PhD

Dr. Khachadurian, a pioneer in cholesterol research, studied at the American University of Beirut and became Professor of Biochemistry. His studies of children with signs of hypercholesterolemia showed that they inherited two aberrant genes leading to overproduction of cholesterol, which is associated with premature death from coronary artery disease.

These seminal observations defined the disorder known as Homozygous Familial Hypercholesterolemia and eventually led to extraordinary advances in cholesterol therapeutics.