Markku Laakso, MD

Markku Laakso, M.D is Professor of Medicine at the Department of Medicine, University of Kuopio since 1995. Currently he is Academy Professor at the Academy of Finland from 2005 until 2010. He had International Research Fellowship (The Fogarty International Center, NIH), in 1987-1989 when he worked as a Visiting Scientist at the Department of Medicine, Veterans Administration Medical Center, University of Southern California, San Diego. He was a Visiting Scientist at the Department of Medicine, Division of Medical Genetics, University of Washington, Seattle, in 1993-1994. He has received Pharmacia Award in 1995, Knut Lundbaeck Award in 1998, Novo Nordisk Foundation Award in 2003, and Castelli Pedroli Prize (The European Association for the Study of Diabetes) in 2006. He was Associate Editor for Diabetologia (1997-1999), and a Member of the Editorial Board for Diabetes Care (1997-1999). He is currently a Member of the Editorial Board for Annals of Medicine (2000-), Cardiovascular Diabetology (2001-) and Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism (2006-). He has published about 400 original articles and 70 reviews in the field of internal medicine.

Main areas of research

Main interests in research of Dr. Markku Laakso are cardiovascular complications of type 2 diabetes and the genetics of type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. His research team belongs to the Centre of Excellence at the Academy of Finland (Centre of Excellence for Research in Cardiovascular Diseases and Type 2 Diabetes), and to the Centre of Excellence Network in Europe (European Network on Functional Genomics of Type 2 Diabetes (EUGENE2)).

Dr. Laakso has published several studies on cardiovascular complications of type 2 diabetes. He has demonstrated that insulin resistance and hyperglycemia are strong predictors for coronary heart disease. He was the first to show that insulin resistance measured by the euglycemic clamp was associated with asymptomatic atherosclerosis in carotid and femoral arteries, and we has demonstrated that insulin resistance is tighly coupled with skeletal muscle blood flow, which links glucose metabolism and endothelial function together. During the last 10 years the main focus of his research has been the genetics of type 2 diabetes and insulin resistance. With his collaborators Dr. Laakso demonstrated in 1998 that the Pro12Ala polymorphism of the PPARG2 gene is associated with insulin resistance and risk of type 2 diabetes. He has also found a new subtype of autosomal dominant diabetes attributable for a mutation in the sulfonylurea receptor 1 gene.

Several doctoral students and postdocs from Finland and from different countries are currently working in his laboratory.

Selected Recent Publications

Pihlajamäki J, Salmenniemi U, Vänttinen M, Ruotsalainen E, Kuusisto J, Vauhkonen I, Kainulainen S, Ng MCY, Cox NJ, Bell GI, Laakso M: Common polymorphisms of calpain-10 are associated with abdominal obesity in subjects at high risk for type 2 diabetes. Diabetologia 49:1560-1566, 2006

Andruolionyte L, Chiasson J-L, Laakso M: SNPs of PPARD in combination with the Gly482Ser substitution of PGC-1A and the Pro12Ala substitution of PPARG2 predict the conversion from IGT to type 2 diabetes: the STOP-NIDDM trial. Diabetes 55:2148-2152, 2006.

Juutilainen A, Lehto S, Rönnemaa T, Pyörälä K, Laakso M: Type 2 diabetes as a "coronary heart disease equivalent": an 18-year prospective population-based study in Finnish subjects. Diabetes Care 28:2901-2907, 2005.

Kilhovd BK, Juutilainen A, Lehto S, Rönnemaa T, Torjesen PA, Birkeland KI, Berg TJ, Hanssen KF, Laakso M: High serum levels of advanced glycation end products predict increased coronary heart disease mortality in non-diabetic women butnot in nondiabetic men: a population-based 18-year follow-up study. Arterioscl Thromb Vasc Biol 25:815-820, 2005.

Pihlajamäki J, Kinnunen M, Ruotsalainen E, Salmenniemi U, Vauhkonen I, Kuulasmaa T, Kainulainen S, Laakso M: Haplotypes of PPARGC1A are associated with glucose tolerance, body mass index and insulin sensitivity in offspring of patients with type 2 diabetes. Diabetologia 48:1331-1334, 2005.

Laukkanen O, Lindström J, Eriksson J, Valle TT, Hämäläinen H, Ilanne-Parikka P, Keinänen-Kiukaanniemi S, Tuomilehto J, Uusitupa M, Laakso M for the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study Group: Polymorphisms in the SLC2A2 (GLUT2) gene are associated with the conversion from impaired glucose tolerance to type 2 diabetes: the Finnish Diabetes Prevention Study. Diabetes 54:2256-2260, 2005.

Vänttinen M, Nuutila P, Kuulasmaa T, Pihlajamäki J, Hällsten K, Virtanen KA, Lautamäki R, Peltoniemi P, Takala T, Viljanen APM, Knuuti J, Laakso M: Single nucleotide polmorphisms in the peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor ? gene are associated with skeletal muscle glucose uptake. Diabetes 54:3587-3591, 2005.

Pajukanta P, Lilja HE, Sinsheimer JS, Cantor RM, Lusis AJ, Gentile M, Joyce Duan X, Soro-Paavonen A, Saarela J, Laakso M, Ehnholm C, Taskinen MR, Peltonen L: Familial combined hyperlipidemia is associated with upstream transcription factor 1 (USF1). Nat Genet 36:371-376, 2004.

Salmenniemi U, Ruotsalainen E, Pihlajamäki J, Vauhkonen I, Kainulainen S, Punnonen K, Vanninen E, Laakso M: Multiple abnormalities in glucose and energy metabolism, and coordinated changes in levels of adiponectin, cytokines and adhesion molecules in subjects with the metabolic syndrome. Circulation 110:3842-3848, 2004.