Elsa M. Rodarte, MD

Biography

Dr. Rodarte is a board-certified neurologist and movement disorder specialist. She grew up in Chihuahua, Mexico and Chicago, Illinois and chose to study medicine in Monterrey, Mexico, a vibrant city of 5 million people. Toward the end of her medical school, she spent 3 months in the Neurosurgery department at Johns Hopkins University scrutinizing Harvey Cushing’s historical drawings and files on trigeminal neuralgia. She decided to pursue a career in the United States to be part of its innovative thinking, its immersion in conceptual thinking, and its international panorama.
She spent her last year of medical school and subsequent years as a postdoctoral fellow studying genetics, mast cells, airway mechanics, and anaphylaxis models with a phenomenal Pulmonary Medicine group at MD Anderson Cancer Center. Specifically, she unraveled the mechanisms through which mast cells—a type of immune cell related to allergies and autonomic functions—secrete their contents. She then moved to the Neurobiology department at the McGovern Medical School where she joined a dynamic multi-disciplinary team to develop viral tools to inactivate neurons in mice and primates. She examined these inactivated neurons through electrophysiology, neurosurgical implantation, and microscopy.
Dr. Rodarte then began her residency in Neurology at The University of Texas Health Science Center where she integrated what she saw in the laboratory through the experiences and stories of patients and the neurological examination taught by her mentors. With its 6.7 million inhabitants, Houston has a large genetic diversity which translates to different types of strokes, epilepsy, neuromuscular disease, and neuroimmunological syndromes. Dr. Rodarte saw how these systems and the emotional aspect of disease were integrated in Movement Disorders and Neurodegenerative Diseases and pursued a fellowship to help patients with parkinsonism, dystonia, chorea, tics, ataxia, and other movement disorders. Dr. Rodarte is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Italian, and she profits from Houston’s linguistic diversity.
Dr. Rodarte enjoys learning and teaching; she was the recipient of the Gold Foundation’s Humanism and Excellence in Teaching Award during her Neurology residency. Dr. Rodarte is involved in deep brain stimulation research, and she collaborates with colleagues in elucidating ways to circumvent cellular defects in Parkinson’s Disease and Huntington’s Disease. At the laboratory and the clinic, Dr. Rodarte’s curiosity is presently directed at the role brain mast cells in movement disorders.