Andrew J. Laster, MD, FACR, MACR

I have been told that I wanted to be a physician since I was a little kid, likely influenced by my maternal grandfather, Bernard Aschner, MD. He was a gynecologic surgeon and physiologist trained in Vienna and Berlin, who showed that the pituitary gland controls growth and sexual development by successfully performing transsphenoidal hypophysectomies in pups and comparing them to controls from the same litter. He later taught the surgical technique to the neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing, MD.

After a third COVID-19 vaccine dose, patients with autoimmune rheumatic diseases often fail to mount an effective response useful in preventing omicron breakthrough infection, according to data published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.