Fredrik H Nystrom*
Department of Medical and Health Sciences, Linköping University, Linköping, Sweden
Fredrik Nystrom became specialist in Endocrinology in 1994 and in internal medicine in 1996. He defended his phD thesis on ambulatory blood pressure and components of the metabolic syndrome in a population in 1997. Between 1997 and 1999 he was postdoc at NIH, NHLBI, in Bethesda MD, and learnt molecular biology from his tutor M J Quon (1). After his return to Sweden in 1999 he adapted the transfection technique he learnt at NIH in order to transfect primary human fat cells instead of primary rat fat cells, and several molecular biological papers were published in which this technique was used (2; 3). His first three PhD students all worked with this technique to transfect primary human fat cells in their thesis projects, Karin Stenkula (later on postdoc at NIH, NIDDK, in Bethesda S Cushman), Lilian Sauma and Niclas Franck (4) (later on postdoc at Karolinska Institute, J Zierath).
Fredrik Nystrom launched a study of fast food based hyper-alimentation in 2006 and 11 papers have been published with data from this rather extreme trial (exampels: 5-7), in which participants gained on average 10% of body weight during 4 weeks. A follow up study demonstrated that hyper-alimentation corresponding to addition of 20 kcal/kg/day for two weeks increased insulin and cholesterol levels if it was based on candy (sugar), but increased basal metabolic rate only in the group randomized to peanuts (protein and fat) (8). More recent life-style studies include a randomized study of three months in which participants were assigned either to complete alcohol abstention or to drink one (women) or two glasses (men) of wine/day. This study found minimal effects of alcohol on hepatic triglyceride content while LDL-cholesterol levels dropped 10% (Kechagias et al. Annals of medicine, 2011, epubl May 24). Data on incorproration of ethylglucuronide in hair have also been published (Kronstrand et al. Forensic Science International 2011 Feb 28.) and constitute a new method to assess long-term alchol intake in humans.
Fredrik Nystrom continues to work with epidemiology and cardiovascular risk factors and just published a paper in JAMA demonstrating that a high systolic blood pressure when admitted to the intensive care unit is linked with a low one- and three- year mortality rate (9). One of his main clinical studies on the same topic is the CARDIPP trial in which all 761 participants now are being reinvestigated after 4 years. CARDIPP is an acronym for Cardiovascular Risk Factors in Patients with Diabetes -a Prospective Study in Primary Care, and all participants have type 2 diabetes and are 55-65 years old. All participants have undergone an extensive investigation including laboratory analyses, cardiac ultrasonography, a recording of 24-hour ambulatory blood pressure (10), measurement of the carotid, femoral and radial pulse pressures and calculation of central blood pressure and pulse wave velocity. Also the intima-media thickness of the carotid arteries has been measured. The CARDIPP trial is run in a team including prof. T Länne, prof. CJ Östgren, ass. prof. T Lindström and ass. prof . J Engvall from the department of Medical and Health Sciences at Linköping University.
Currently Fredrik Nystrom and PhD student Hans Guldbrand MD (et al.) finished a randomized study of a low fat compared with high fat intake (low carb- LCHF) in patients with type 2 diabetes.
Diabetes
