Professor J Kennedy Cruickshank

Professor of Cardiovascular Medicine & Diabetes at King’s College & consultant physician at St Thomas’ & Guy’s Hospitals, London since 2011, and previously in Manchester, UK. He was born & raised in Jamaica, with two 1y Lecturer & Senior Lecturer periods back in the University of the West Indies in Jamaica then Barbados.

After a Physiology BSc during medical school at Birmingham University, UK, clinical research there after MRCP, immunological work at Hammersmith/RPMS then epidemiological research training at the London School of Tropical Medicine, a Wellcome fellowship with Professor George Miller at the MRC Unit and Clinical Research Centre, Northwick Park, N-W London. That included work on HTLV-1 and spastic paraparesis between Caribbean migrants in London and family members in Jamaica, with 14 papers including a 35-pager in Brain 1989. His work on arterial function started then, later showing that arterial stiffness as pulse wave velocity is a more powerful index of prognosis than, and independent of, blood pressure (Circulation 2002).

In Manchester, he ran the Cardiovascular Clinical Trials Unit and coordinated an EU study on nutritional origins of high BP & diabetes between rural & urban Cameroon, Jamaica, France & Manchester (Int J Epidemiol 2001 etc) and ran the local arm of ‘HAPO’, the Hyperglycaemia and (Adverse) Pregnancy Outcome study, from whose local cohort of 2500 women many papers arose (J Clin Endo Metab 2011; Article). One used metabolomics to show that disturbances of intermediary lipid metabolite occur well before hyperglycaemia in T2 Diabetes and which probably define the disease and its blood vessel damage (Article). Overseas work includes the roles of i. acute early childhood malnutrition in later development of high blood pressure (BP) in Jamaica (Hypertension 2014); ii. malaria in pregnancy on higher BP in infants (also Hypertension 2014), followed by extensive effort on our Malaria-High BP hypothesis by our Kenyan PhD student (Circulatn Rsrch 2016 Article; Am J Epidemiol. 2018). JKC’s research continues on origins of ethnic differences in (eg: Hypertension. 2016, Article) and appropriate prevention (Proc Nut Soc 2018) and treatment (J Am Coll Cardiol. 2017, The VaSera Trial.; Hypertension 2017) for cardiovascular disease/ ‘diabetes’, particularly arterial function and stiffness via mechanisms through the life course, in close collaboration with Clinical Pharmacology. He is immediate past President, 2016-2018, of the Artery Society

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=Cruickshank+JK and + Cruickshank+K