Board of Directors

Sonia is smiling, and is a lighter skin brown/south Asian person, wearing a Black floral dress, long Black hair and a red lip

Dr. Sonia Rehal

CEO/Board of Directorssonia.rehal@gmail.com

I am currently an educator at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario and the director for Lipodystrophy Canada, and non-for-profit organization supporting lipodystrophy patients and caregivers.

Being a lipodystrophy patient myself, my advocacy for awareness started young. Interested in understanding the pathophysiology of lipodystrophy, my postdoctoral training focused on lipid inflammation and insulin resistance in animal models of obesity. This journey has allowed me to travel the world and publish important research findings in highly cited research journals. More importantly, my academic career has given me a unique perspective to patient advocacy, highlighting how important disease awareness and research funding for prospective treatments and are for our lipodystrophy community. 

Lipodystrophy can vary in severity however these themes hold in common: Lipodystrophy is incurable, has inadequate medical treatment and affects multiple organ systems. Unfortunately, a severe form of lipodystrophy has affected my family and myself, losing both my mother and sister to its complications at a very young age. This loss has only further intensified my passion to support our rare disease community affected by lipodystrophy.