Marc Roger Couturier, PhD

Dr. Couturier is the medical director of Microbial Immunology, Parasitology and Fecal Testing, and Infectious Disease Rapid Testing at ARUP. He is also an assistant professor of pathology at the University Of Utah School Of Medicine. Dr. Couturier received his PhD in medical microbiology and immunology with specialty in bacteriology from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. He served as a research associate/post-doctoral fellow at the Alberta Provincial Laboratory for Public Health and completed a medical microbiology fellowship (ABMM) at the University of Utah. He is board certified in medical microbiology, and a member of the American Society for Microbiology and Infectious Disease Society of America.

Dr. Couturier is interested in diarrheal illnesses and improving the sensitivity of their diagnosis, in particular, emerging and underappreciated agents of diarrhea. Through his training in the Alberta Provincial Laboratory for Public Health, he developed molecular diagnostic methods for the detection of Enterohaemorrhagic E. coli. His continued interest in diarrheal pathogens has sparked research efforts in Campylobacter spp., Clostridium difficile, parasitic protozoa, and enteric viruses.

Dr. Couturier has research experience in the field of H. pylori pathogenesis, and is now investigating the prevalence of this pathogen in a poorly defined population in Utah. In addition to defining the local prevalence, Dr. Couturier is actively working to identify sub-populations of high risk individuals with disparate access to medical care in attempts to identify patients at increased risk of developing severe complications such as gastric cancers.