Diabetes Kongress 2019
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Karl-Heinz Ladwig
Karl Heinz Ladwig is Professor of Psychosomatic Medicine and Psychological Medicine at the Medical Faculty of the Technical University of Munich (TUM). He is also head of the Mental Health Epidemiology Unit of the Institute of Epidemiology at the Helmholtz Zentrum Muenchen, German Research Centre for Environmental Health. As expert in public health and clinical epidemiology, his major research topics comprise mental health related stress research including molecular and biological concepts. Based on clinical experience and research on stress-induced sequel of behaviour in cardiac patients, more than twenty years ago, Ladwig’s group broke new ground by introducing the “post infarction depression” as a new and promising psychological phenotype in cardiology. Since then, his research has contributed to the prognostic impact of post-infarction depression on case fatality and morbidity, quality of life in survivors of sudden cardiac death, cortisol responses in stress reactivity in patients with ventricular arrhythmias, covariates of intra-cardiac pain perception and gender differences in symptom reporting. Psychosomatic concepts are now being implemented in many policy documents and guidelines on various sub-topics in cardiology. Currently, he is engaged as coordinator for a first comprehensive position paper on psycho-cardiology for the European Association Preventive Cardiology (EAPC). Prof. Ladwig is member of the brain academy of the DZD and is currently involved in research analysing possible psycho-biological pathways of sustained mental stress as risk factor for the onset of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus with focus on the interaction with markers of inflammation, autonomic hyperregulation and endocrine malfunction. He analyses psychological aspects of classical CHD and metabolic risk factors (adipositas, nicotine dependency) by applying data from the ongoing MONICA/KORA population based cohort study which is one of Europe’s most extended population based laboratories. Very recently, Dr. Li in his group investigated the impact of sleep disorder and its interaction with impaired glucose metabolism on brain morphology and revealed significant effects on reduced grey matter volume.
Helmholtz Zentrum München, Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Gesundheit und Umwelt (GmbH) Germany