Yutaka Imai, MD

Born: 1946

Dr. Imai is principal investigator of the Ohasama study initiated in 1986 in the northern part of Japan, a pioneering cohort study of the risk associated with ambulatory blood pressure (BP) and self–blood pressure measurement at home (home BP).

Professor Imai graduated from Tohoku University School of Medicine in 1971 and soon engaged in clinical research on hypertension in the Department of Medicine. Since 1973, he served with Professor Kaoru Yoshinaga as Associate, and became visiting senior lecture in the Department of Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia from 1982 to 1984. He took up his current post as Chairman and Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics of Tohoku University Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences and Medicine in 1999.

The Ohasama Study has developed reference values for home BP and ambulatory BP based on long–term prospective study of cardiovascular disease risk. It provided serial Reports for the Joint National Committee on Prevention, Detection, Evaluation and Treatment of High Blood Pressure and contributed to the 1999 World Health Organization / International Society of Hypertension guidelines for management of hypertension with the global standard of reference values for home and ambulatory BP.

Professor Imai is now conducting a large-scale intervention trial using home BP measurements and the Internet, the Hypertension Objective Treatment Based on Measurements by Electrical Devices of Blood Pressure (HOMED-BP). (HB)