Roy Taylor qualified in medicine at the University of Edinburgh and is now Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Metabolism at the University of Newcastle. He was honorary Consultant Physician at Newcastle Acute Hospitals NHS Trust. He founded the Newcastle Magnetic Resonance Centre. His work encompasses application of magnetic resonance methodology to clinical medicine, metabolic research in diabetes, clinical outcome research in diabetic pregnancy, prevention of blindness by retinal screening in diabetes, and teaching in diabetes and obstetric medicine. His expertise also extends to management of pregnancy in type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes, and management of hyperemesis gravidarum.
His research interests include aetiological mechanisms of type 2 diabetes and clinical studies of remission of type 2 diabetes, and he has published several hundred articles. In 2011, he identified the causative mechanisms of type 2 diabetes and showed how these are returned to normal by weight loss. This has led to a series of clinical studies, including the DiRECT study, on remission of type 2 diabetes that have also confirmed and extended understanding of the aetiological mechanisms. Type 2 diabetes can now be understood as a condition of homogenous aetiology occurring in heterogenous individuals.
In the ReTUNE study, Professor Taylor’s team has established that type 2 diabetes in people who have a normal BMI is also caused by too much fat inside the liver and pancreas and that remission of diabetes can be achieved by weight loss. He has shown that type 2 diabetes is caused by the same mechanisms in obese and normal weight people.
He lectures on the new understanding of type 2 diabetes nationally and internationally, and his named lectures include the Banting Lecture of Diabetes UK in 2012, and most recently the Sir Robert W Philip Lecture of The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 2021. He was awarded the Robert Turner prize for research impact in 2023.
Duality of Interest: None declared
Date: Summer 2023