Eero Kajantie - Biography#

Eero entered science mid-career, after having earned specialist physician qualifications in paediatrics, and subsequently in clinical genetics and public health. He trained as postdoc at U Southampton with David Barker when Developmental Origins of Health and Disease (DOHaD) theory explaining early life effects on lifelong health was first introduced. At that time the emerging DOHaD research had largely neglected lifelong health outcomes after preterm birth. Eero chose to focus on this in his independent research, which early on produced many highly cited papers such as the first study to demonstrate endocrine programming including impaired glucose regulation among adults born preterm (Hovi NEJM 2007).

His team then moved on to mechanistic studies including a “natural experiment” of comparing adults born preterm very low birth weight with their siblings born at term. These studies have provided support for the relevance of DOHaD and developmental plasticity theories and epigenetic programming in preterm birth outcomes.

Eero is a teambuilder. In 2011, he teamed with Prof Saigal, one of the founding researchers in neonatal follow-up, to start the Adults Born Preterm International Collaboration APIC which he now co-chairs. APIC has been a gamechanger in the field, fostering collaboration, supporting advocacy and making possible substantial national and international funding including the EU-funded RECAP Preterm consortium that has been instrumental in consolidating the field in Europe.

Eero joined University of Oulu in 2019 as Professor of Lifecourse Medicine. He also serves as a team leader at Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (Governmental research institution) and has a honorary position at Norwegian University for Science and Technology. His current work 1) searches for actionable mechanisms underlying lifelong outcomes of preterm birth; 2) tests evolutionary hypotheses on reproductive and next-generation outcomes in adults born preterm, in a collaborative register study he started in >11 million people in 3 generations in 4 Nordic countries and; 3) together with researchers in Bangladesh and Malawi, assesses long-term and next-generation outcomes of preterm birth in these low-resource settings.