Peter Schnohr, MD

Born: 1941

Peter Schnohr is an early-generation preventive cardiologist who initiated a preventive health program in 1968 and then set up a privately sponsored formal cohort study of CVD risk in 1976, the Copenhagen City Heart Study, still ongoing under his direction.

He received his MD from the University of Copenhagen in 1968, and as a young cardiologist in 1977 organized a major conference and landmark publication on “Ischemic Heart Disease. The Strategy of Postponement.” Schnohr has been most active in the study of the physiologic and health risk effects of physical activity and athletics.

In recent years the 20-year follow-up by Schnohr and colleagues of the large Copenhagen cohort of men and women has been particularly fruitful with seminal contributions including:

• The apparent protective relationship of physical activity to lung function, abdominal obesity, coronary disease and stroke, cancer, and total mortality, with the indication of importance in the intensity of effort;

• The association of fatigue and depression with CVD risk and the importance of even light tobacco smoking to excess risk;

• The association of intimate and rich family society with reduced CVD risk;

• Extra-favorable association of moderate wine drinking with lower risk of CHD and Stroke

• The association of reduced lung function and ischemic ECG signs with excess CVD risk;

• Weak to absent findings of independent risk associated with numerous lipid and blood pressure-related gene mutations. (HB)

Please click here for a description of the Copenhagen City Heart Study.