Harry KeenCBE (3 September 1925 – 5 April 2013)[1] was an English diabetologist and a professor of human metabolism at Guy's Hospital. He was the first to identify microalbuminuria as a predictor of kidney disease in diabetics, and was an international authority on diabetes.
When Keen returned to London from the United States in 1961, he was hired as a lecturer by Guy's Hospital and its associated medical school, where he would spend the rest of his career.[3] In 1962, he conducted the Bedford Survey, in which every adult in Bedford was asked to provide a urine sample in order to study the population prevalence of diabetes; around 70% of the population provided samples, and 250 participants were found to have undiagnosed diabetes as a result.[1] The study led to the first definition of prediabetes, which Keen called "borderline diabetes", and demonstrated the relationship between glucose intolerance and cardiovascular disease at a population level.[1] He and his colleagues became the first, in 1964, to show that trace amounts of the protein albumin in urine could predict kidney disease in diabetes, which is now the basis for routine kidney screening in diabetic patients.[1] With the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, he conducted the Whitehall Survey in 1969,[5] which led to the creation of different glucose thresholds for microvascular and macrovascular disease.[6] He also pioneered the concept of the insulin pump, which delivers insulin continuously to type 1 diabetics who are reliant on insulin.[5] In 1971, he was appointed professor of human metabolism at Guy's.[3] He established one of the UK's first diabetes centres at Guy's Hospital.[7]
Keen married Anna "Nan" Miliband, the sister of sociologist Ralph Miliband, in 1953; they had a son and a daughter. He was an uncle by marriage to Labour politicians Ed Miliband and David Miliband.[8] He died on 5 April 2013.[2]
