Morten Poulsen
Endocrinologist at Aarhus University Hospital who led one of the first careful human trials of high-dose resveratrol, which found no metabolic benefit in obese men
Department of Endocrinology and Internal Medicine, Aarhus University Hospital (papers 2012–2025)
Morten Poulsen is first author of the Atlas study POU2013, with Jens Otto Lunde Jørgensen as senior author. Resveratrol, a compound found in red grape skin, had made headlines because it seemed to mimic calorie restriction and protect rodents on rich diets. Poulsen and colleagues gave obese but otherwise healthy men a high dose of resveratrol or a placebo for four weeks and measured insulin sensitivity, fuel use, blood pressure and body composition with precise methods.
Resveratrol changed none of them. The result contradicted the rodent data that had driven the enthusiasm and is a useful reminder that a strong animal result does not guarantee a human one. The trial was short and small, so it cannot rule out effects with longer treatment, but it set a clear benchmark.
Poulsen's earlier work in the same Aarhus group, with Pedersen as senior author, tested resveratrol in rats on a high-fat diet, where it prevented fatty liver (2012), and the group later reported that resveratrol also did not help people with the metabolic syndrome (2017). More recent papers from the Department of Endocrinology and Internal Medicine follow Danish families with RET gene variants that cause multiple endocrine neoplasia type 2, an inherited cancer syndrome of the thyroid and adrenal glands, in nationwide studies (2019 to 2025).
Milestones in the Atlas
A selection, not a full bibliography: only papers that meet the Atlas inclusion criteria.
| Year | Evidence | Study |
|---|---|---|
| 2013 | H | High-dose resveratrol supplementation in obese men: an investigator-initiated, randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial of substrate metabolism, insulin sensitivity, and body composition POU2013 First author: ran the randomised trial in which four weeks of high-dose resveratrol had no effect on insulin sensitivity, blood pressure or body composition in obese men. |
Co-authors in the Atlas 1
People with a profile here who share at least one study with Morten Poulsen.
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- Jens Otto L Jørgensen Clinical professor of endocrinology at Aarhus University who studies growth hormone, the pituitary and adrenal glands and metabolism in people, and senior author of a trial showing that high-dose resveratrol did not improve metabolism in obese men
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