Mark Unruh

Professor & Chair of Medicine, University of New Mexico

Mark Unruh, MD, MS serves as Professor and Chair of Medicine at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Unruh’s investigation of subjective and objective sleep quality and sleep disorders in patients with chronic kidney disease aims to find targeted interventions to improve sleep and daytime functioning. In order to better understand the sleep quality in the CKD population, Dr. Unruh has worked with community cohorts to describe sleep quality and sleep apnea in the general population. Dr. Unruh published work in JAGS describing the association of age and gender with polysomnography and was a co-author in the seminal findings of the Sleep Heart Health Study showing an association of sleep apnea with mortality for men and women less than 70 years-old recently published in PLOS MEDICINE. Dr. Unruh took advantage of methods using home polysomnography developed for the Sleep Heart Health Study to show that older adults with ESRD were 4-fold more likely to have severe sleep apnea compared to a matched control group. Dr. Unruh currently leads the UNM site and patient reported outcomes for a trial examining the impact of trazadone vs. cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.