Monica Guma, MD., PhD., received her M.D. at Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain. She then completed a rheumatology fellowship at the Germans Trias i Pujol Hospital and her Ph.D. in immunology at Pompeu Fabra University, both in Barcelona, Spain. She later moved to University of California at San Diego for her postdoctoral fellowship and rheumatology clinical fellowship. Dr. Guma is now Professor of Medicine and Chief of the Division of Rheumatology, Autoimmunity and Inflammation at UC San Diego and the at UC San Diego. Her research focuses on understanding how dietary interventions and metabolic pathways influence inflammation and disease progression in rheumatic diseases. Patients with inflammatory arthritis frequently report symptom changes related to diet, motivating the development of the ITIS diet, an anti-inflammatory dietary approach designed as a complementary therapy. Her work aims to determine whether anti-inflammatory diets should be integrated as a core therapeutic strategy for rheumatic diseases, including Rheumatoid Arthritis and Osteoarthritis, by modulating the gut microbiome and circulating pro- and anti-inflammatory metabolites.

In parallel, Dr. Guma investigates the mechanisms underlying chronic inflammation in inflammatory arthritis to inform the development of novel therapeutic interventions. Dr. Guma is also interested in identifying metabolic biomarkers that predict patients at high risk for joint damage and in characterizing changes in circulating and synovial inflammatory mediators in response to therapeutic interventions.