Director of Oxford University’s Diabetes Trials Unit wins Japan Society of Diabetic Complications award
12 Nov 07
Professor Rury Holman, Director of the Diabetes Trials Unit at Oxford University, has been awarded the ‘Outstanding Foreign Investigator Award’ by the Japan Society of Diabetic Complications.
Professor Holman gave a one-hour lecture entitled ‘From UKPDS to 4-T’ at the Japan Society of Diabetic complications 22nd annual meeting in Tsukba, Japan, on Friday 26 October. President of the society Nobuhiro Yamada, who presented the award, praised Professor Holman’s expertise and achievement in the UK Prospective Diabetes Study (UKPDS) and other clinical epidemiological works.
The Diabetes Trials Unit (DTU) founded in 1985 by Professor Rury Holman, is the largest clinical diabetes research group. The DTU investigates the pathophysiology of type 2 diabetes, evaluates potential therapeutic and preventative treatments, and runs national and international clinical outcomes studies, including the Treating To Target in Type 2 diabetes (4-T) and the UK Prospective Diabetes Study.
The UK Prospective Diabetes Study is a 30-year landmark trial which recruited 5,102 patients with type 2 diabetes in 23 clinical centres based in England, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. Its findings have shown that better blood glucose control reduces the risk of major diabetic eye disease by a quarter and early kidney damage by a third. Better blood pressure control, in the many patients who have high blood pressure, reduces the risk of death from long-term complications of diabetes by a third, strokes by more than a third, and serious deterioration of vision by more than a third.
The 4-T study is a three-year, multi-centre open-label, randomised, parallel-group trial comparing the safety of three different analogue insulin treatments regimens in 700 participants with Type 2 diabetes inadequately controlled by oral therapy.
Professor Holman said: ‘I am delighted to accept this award on behalf of all those who have helped make the UKPDS and the 4-T studies possible.’
Professor Rury Holman is Professor of Diabetic Medicine at the University of Oxford, Academic Chairman of the Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology, and Metabolism (OCDEM), Director of the Diabetes Trials Unit and an Honorary Consultant Physician to the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals Trust. He was the 2002 Pfizer Visiting Professor at the University of Washington and gave the 2003 Lord Rayner memorial lecture at the Royal College of Physicians in London.