Hugo Kesteloot, MD, PhD

1927 — 2010

Kesteloot was a pioneer Belgian investigator in cross-cultural studies of diet, hypertension, coronary disease, and total mortality and their time trends.

He received his MD from the Catholic University of Leuven (K.U.Leuven) in 1952 and a doctorate from the same university in 1963 and served as Professor of Medicine there from 1970 until retirement in 1994. He was also Visiting Professor of Kyuong-Hee University, Seoul, South Korea, from 1972-1980 where he compared risk factors and disease in South Korean populations with European, Chinese, and African groups. He was a central figure in several other cross-cultural studies, including Intersalt and Intermap.

Continuing the pioneering analyses of his senior Leuven colleague, Joseph Joossens, Kesteloot applied regression models to study the relations of age, diet, and smoking with mortality and specific causes of death, and of regional and sex differences in mortality trends. When various equations fit better than others, he drew useful conclusions about the central role of diet and smoking in population disease differences and trends.

Hugo Kesteloot remained an active, curious, and vital researcher until the last year of his life. (KP/HB)