Knut Borch-Johnsen, MD, DMSc
Professor Knut Borch-Johnsen is the director of the Steno Diabetes Center in Denmark. His area of
research has covered the epidemiology of late diabetic complications in type 1 diabetes as well as
type 2 diabetes (mainly renal cardiovascular disease). During the last 10 to 15 years the focus
area of interest has been type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease with main focus on
prevention of type 2 diabetes, early detection and screening strategies for type 2 diabetes
and early intervention in screen detected diabetic individuals.
Professor Knut Borch-Johnsen has initiated the DECODE study and the DECODE-Asia study in collaboration with Jaako Tuomilehto in Helsinki, the DETECT-2 diabetes database in collaboration with Professor Stephen Colagiuri from Australia (a global database serving many of the same aims as the DECODE and DECODE-Asia study, but also with a focus on development and validation of screening and early detection strategies for type 2 diabetes). He is responsible for the diabetes arm of the Danish Inter99 study, a population based intervention study including 60,000 individuals in the age group 30 to 60 years. Finally, he is initiator and co-principle investigator of the ADDITION study, a population based screening, early detection and intervention trial in type 2 diabetes including more than 3,000 screen detected diabetic individuals in Denmark, the Netherlands and United Kingdom.
Knut Borch-Johnsen graduated in 1981, worked as a research fellow at the Steno Diabetes Center until 1986 where he wrote his thesis ‘the prognosis of insulin dependent diabetes mellitus’. From 1993 to 1997 Knut Borch-Johnsen was head of the research unit, Copenhagen County centre of preventive medicine, including among others the Cluster population studies, in 1997 he became consultant at the Steno Diabetes Center and since year 2000 he has been the director of the Steno Diabetes Center, a hospital, education centre and research unit in the field of diabetes with a staff of more than 200, more than 50 % are working in research. He is heading his own epidemiology research group including 12 to 15 members.