Andrew O. Agbaje

About

Prof. Agbaje, MD, MPH, PhD, FESC, FAHA, FNYAM, Cert. Clinical Researcher (Harvard), is an award-winning physician and professor (associate) of clinical epidemiology and child health who currently investigates causal relationships of aerobic fitness, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, body composition, insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia, and metabolic syndrome with arterial, cardiac, liver, and kidney structure and function from childhood through young adulthood. Research group website https://urfit-child.com Prof Agbaje discovered childhood tobacco smoking as a cause of premature cardiac damage and identified that smoking prevalence increased 15 times between the age of 13 to 17 years. He also discovered arterial stiffness as a novel risk factor for paediatric obesity and insulin resistance, identified adolescence as the critical time to interrupt fat mass-insulin resistance pathologic cycle, and demonstrated light-intensity physical activity as a highly effective antidote for reversing excessive fat deposit induced by childhood sedentariness. Recently, he discovered waist-to-height ratio as a specific surrogate for fat mass but not muscle mass that could replace BMI in assessing childhood obesity. Subsequently, he was interviewed LIVE on BBC World News TV to discuss the novel findings. In December 2024, the American Heart Association selected Prof Agbaje’s study as one of the world’s most significant advances in cardiovascular research in 2024. In October 2023, two of Prof. Agbaje’s publications were placed in the Top 1% highly cited paper in the academic field of Clinical Medicine, while a third publication was placed in the Top 1% highly cited paper in the academic field of Biology & Biochemistry by Clarivate’s Web of Science. He has single/first authored original papers in highly prestigious journals such as JACC and Nature Communications. He was interviewed LIVE on BBC World Service Radio Newsday programme on 15th Dec 2023, BBC Radio Devon on 16th Jan 2024, and BBC World News LIVE TV programme on 14th March 2024. The University of Eastern Finland recorded a podcast interview of his findings as well as a video. His impactful research has received extensive press coverage, with over 2,500 media mentions between 2022 - 2024 in outlets such as CNN, Daily Mail, Mirror, BILD, Infobae, Yahoo Lifestyle, Yahoo Sport, US News & World report, DocCheck, MSN, WebMD, Medscape, The Conversation, Jerusalem Post, Helsingin Sanomat, etc, potentially reaching a global audience of more than 5.5 billion. The equivalent advertising value of these news articles is more than 30 million US dollars. The Endocrine Society in US recorded a podcast interview of his research and discussed his research in the prestigious Endocrine Magazine March 2024 edition. He gave a press conference at the ENDO 2024 congress in Boston, US. He was interviewed by the European Association for the Study of Obesity, a federation of 36 European countries’ professional associations and subsequently had a video interview at the European Congress on Obesity. He has received several scientific excellence awards including the prestigious EASO-Novo Nordisk Foundation for New Investigator Award in Childhood Obesity with a 300,000 Danish Kroner (€40,000 / 44,000 USD) prize. Other awards are the Endocrine Society Award for outstanding abstract, American Heart Association’s Elizabeth Barrett-Connor Research Award in Epidemiology and Prevention (once), Jeremiah and Rose Stamler Research Award (twice), and Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award (four times). He co-authored an American Heart Association Scientific Statement on Environmental Exposures and Pediatric Cardiology, published in Circulation. He had a video discussion of the Scientific Statement. He was an invited guest speaker to the largest mother and child center in Canada – CHU Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital Center, Canada in March 2023 to speak on the determinants of carotid intima-media thickness and arterial stiffness in pediatrics. He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Children’s Health and Exercise Research Centre (CHERC), Department of Public Health and Sports Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK. He is an Associate Editor in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle (JCSM), serves on the editorial board of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB). He is an elected Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC), an elected Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA), an elected Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine (FNYAM). These titles of honour, symbol of excellence and lifetime achievement recognizes his significant contribution to cardiovascular field in Europe and America. He is an expert advisor to the World Health Organization and European Association for the Study of Obesity’s task force on preventing childhood obesity.

Education

Publications