News archive

Being socially active generally increases your chances of getting a good night’s sleep. But if you are active late into the evening, it reduces the number of hours you sleep – and can also affect your social life. This is according to a new study from Stockholm University and Karolinska Institutet published in the scientific journal PNAS.

COVID-19 hits nations worldwide. Social restrictions are being put in place in an effort to limit the spread of the corona virus and save lives.

A new study from Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital shows that many people with mild or asymptomatic COVID-19 demonstrate so-called T-cell-mediated immunity to the new coronavirus, even if they have not tested positively for antibodies. According to the researchers, this means that public immunity is probably higher than antibody tests suggest. The article has been published in the esteemed scientific journal Cell. [This news article has been updated]

Antibiotics use, particularly antibiotics with greater spectrum of microbial coverage, may be associated with an increased risk of new-onset inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and its subtypes ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. That is according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Harvard Medical School in the U.S., published in the journal The Lancet Gastroenterology & Hepatology. The association remained when patients were compared with their siblings.

The disease multiple sclerosis (MS) attacks the central nervous system and, with time, can give rise to muscle tremors and loss of balance. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now identified a gene, Gsta4, that protects a certain kind of cell in the brain from being destroyed. It is hoped that the results of the study, which is published in Nature Communications, can help to improve the treatment of this serious disease.

Johan von Schreeb, Specialist in General Surgery and Disaster medicine at the Karolinska Institutet, has been on site in Beirut for a couple of days now.

The pharmaceutical company Chiesi donates SEK 320,000 to a research project at Karolinska Institutet to develop a new method for large scale COVID-19 tests. The goal is to be able to follow the development of the virus in populations and community groups. The project is led by Nicola Crosetto, researcher at the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics.

With the support of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation 40 professionals, in maternal and child health care and nutrition in Sub-Saharan African countries, will receive training comprising of 7.5 credits from Karolinska Institutet. The training programme is fully online and runs from August until September 2020.

By conducting advanced analyses of immune system activation in patients with severe COVID-19, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have managed to identify several cell types that play a key part in the immune response to the new coronavirus and the hyperinflammation seen in severe cases of the disease. The results are published in the scientific journal Cell Reports Medicine.

A new type of immunotherapy for the skin cancer malignant melanoma shows promising results. Three severely ill patients are now long-term survivors. The study, published in OncoImmunology, is the result of a collaboration between researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital.

Basing their research on an unexpected interspecies difference between rats and mice, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Stockholm University have mapped a system in the brain that controls paternal behaviour towards offspring. A key component in this behaviour is the hormone prolactin, which prepares females for motherhood and has now been shown to control paternal behaviour as well. The study has been published in the journal Cell.

In an interdisciplinary study combining stem cell biology and tumor biology, researchers from Karolinska Institutet (as well as Uppsala and Lund University, together with researchers in Canada, Germany and France), have succeeded in creating a new type of stem cell models for studies on cancer of the brain. The study was recently published in PNAS.

The drug tocilizumab, which is used in the treatment of various forms of arthritis, is associated with shorter time on ventilation and shorter hospital stays for patients with severe COVID-19, a new study from Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital published in The Journal of Internal Medicine reports.

A literature review coordinated by Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and McMaster University in Canada demonstrates that cloth face masks provide clinically useful levels of filtration, which has the potential to reduce the spread of viruses such as SARS-CoV-2. The findings, now published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings, support the wearing of cloth masks to reduce the spread of the new coronavirus, according to the researchers.

Injuries in the nervous system of patients with severe COVID-19 are revealed by magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography. In a study of 185 patients, researchers at KI and Karolinska University Hospital show an affection of microscopic blood vessels and inflammation in the brain, meninges and nerves. The results are published in Radiology.

The human perception of pain may have been influenced by events taking place 50,000-70,000 years ago when our ancestors met the Neanderthals. A Neanderthal gene confers increased sensitivity to pain according to new research from Karolinska Institutet and Max Planck Institute published in Current Biology. These findings could lead to more tailored treatments.

As previously announced, Professor Sten Orrenius has passed away.

The Covid-19 pandemic does not stop the fight for LGBTQ rights. This year’s Stockholm Pride will instead be broadcast live digitally under the name Stockholm Pride Summer Stream. As usual, several of Stockholm’s higher education institutions are participating under the joint Academic Pride banner, which this year brings together both students and employees from seven higher education institutions.

KI-researcher Simon Elsässer, Senior Researcher, is one of fifty-five grantees of the European Research Council (ERC) Proof of Concept funding to explore the commercial or societal potential of their research results.

The COVID-19 pandemic caused by the new coronavirus has created an unprecedented public health challenge globally. Little was known about how the infecting cells respond to the virus and how the virus hijacks the host cellular machinery. A study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet published in Emerging Microbes & Infection gives new insights into the virus-host interplay enabling newer ideas to tackle the virus.

Using a large transfusion database, with data going back to the 1960s, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been able to identify 44 donors and 1,180 transfused patients likely to be infected with hepatitis C, who are still alive and who remain undiagnosed.

The antidepressant fluoxetine has been suggested as a means to improve brain recovery after acute stroke. However, a large randomised study on stroke patients at 35 Swedish hospitals shows that the drug has no such effect. The study, which was led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, is published in The Lancet Neurology.

We have published a systematic review in the Journal of Dental Research

Through a unique database, KI researchers have studied the risk of small bowel cancer in individuals with celiac disease. Principal investigator Louise Emilsson, affiliated researcher at the Department of Medical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, associate professor at HELSAM, Oslo University and co-author Jonas F Ludvigsson, professor at Karolinska Institutet, reflect on their work recently published in Gastroenterology.

Sophie Erhardt's research group, at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology Karolinska Institutet, has been awarded a research grant of in total SEK 1,200,000 from The Swedish Brain Foundation.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a new method that can make it easier for public authorities to assess the health risks of hormone-disrupting chemicals in the environment.

Making the latest research results available to doctors increases the opportunities for finding better individualised cancer treatment. For a few years, researchers at Karolinska Insititutet and several other universities have been working on building a digital tool which will make global genomic data easily available as support for treatment decisions.

In a study published in PNAS, researchers from Karolinska Institutet, the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Nagoya University and Technische Universität Braunschweig show an undiscovered heterogeneity of adult zebrafish Purkinje cells, revealing the existence of anatomically and functionally distinct cell types.

World-Wide FINGERS (WW-FINGERS) is the first global network of clinical trials for risk reduction and prevention of dementia and Alzheimer's disease through multidomain interventions. The network convenes research teams from over 30 countries, and is led by Professor Miia Kivipelto from the Center for Alzheimer Research, Karolinska Institutet. The main scope, scientific strategy and activities of the WW-FINGERS network have been published today (July 6, 2020) in Alzheimer's & Dementia.

A novel study from the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet indicates that antibodies against a small lipid entity, phosphorylcholine (PC), can be associated with protection in inflammatory systemic diseases, including SLE and Sjögren´s syndrome. The results support evidence for a potential treatment by providing antibodies (anti-PC) to patients with these diseases or through immunization with PC.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have imaged tau protein in the brains of living patients with Alzheimer’s disease. The amount and spread of tau proved a predictor of future memory loss. Brain imaging for measuring tau can be useful both for improving diagnosis and for developing more effective treatments, say the researchers. The study is published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.

The vitality of preterm infants should be assessed with an Apgar score, a tool used to measure the health of newborns immediately after birth. That is the conclusion by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden who in a large observational study examined the value of Apgar scores for preterm infants. The findings are published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Evaluating the genetic correlations across our phenotypes is of essential importance for understanding disease etiology and other potential causality. The new method – published in the journal Nature Genetics – vastly improves our power in estimating genetic correlations using the huge established resources from genome-wide association studies.

Professor emeritus Torgny Svensson has passed away following complications of covid-19 on Friday, June 12th, at the age of 75. He will be sorely missed by his family, as well as friends and colleagues in Sweden and around the world.

Repeated measurements of the biomarker FIB-4 in the blood every few years can predict the risk of developing severe liver disease, according to a new study from Karolinska Institutet published in the Journal of Hepatology. The risk of liver cirrhosis increases if the levels of this biomarker rise between two testing occasions.

They receive 750 000 SEK each over a 1-year period.

Just over 12 months ago, the Stockholm Trio University Alliance was launched. The University Alliance between the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm University and KTH has been extended and further developed within several areas over the course of the year. Joint representation in Brussels is a vision that is set to be realised this autumn.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have developed a new method for analysing intact tumour samples in 3D on a molecular level. The study is a collaboration with Karolinska University Hospital and is published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. Now the researchers are planning to use the method to study tissue samples from COVID-19 patients in the hope that it will provide information on where and how the new coronavirus attacks different organs.

In a new study researchers at Karolinska Institutet and KTH Royal Institute of Technology have developed a new kind of brain atlas based on an innovative method of mapping brain tissue into areas according to their molecular profile. The study is published in Science Advances.

Researchers at Aging Research Center, KI, and collaborators in Italy and Spain, studied how multimorbidity, the occurrence of multiple chronic diseases in the same individual, changed over time in old individuals during a 12-year period using data from the Swedish National study on Aging and Care in Kungsholmen (SNAC-K). The study is published today in the scientific journal Nature Communications.

Common respiratory bacteria carried in the nose by healthy children, can sometimes cause life-threatening infections. Birgitta Henriques Normark, Professor at the Department of Microbiology, Tumour and Cell Biology, is investigating why this occurs. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has now awarded her the Torsten Söderberg Academy Professorial Chair in Medicine – a SEK 10 million grant over a period of five years.

The European Commission recognizes Karolinska Institutet with the HR Excellence in Research Award. This is a clear indication that KI is on the right track when it comes to implementing the European Charter for researchers and the Code of conduct for the recruitment of researchers.

Knowledge of how human fat tissue is affected by age has long been defined by numerous mouse-based studies. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now, for the first time, been able to conduct a prospective study on humans that provides novel insights into how our fat cells reduce lipid metabolism with age. The study is published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

In a new study, researchers from the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet have shown a clear link between game intelligence and the brain's ability to create and adapt under time pressure. The study is published in Nature Publishing Group's journal Scientific Reports.

Thanks to new technology, researchers at the Clinical Physiology group, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, Karolinska Institutet, have been able to show that females have higher myocardial perfusion, blood volume and extracellular volume in the heart compared to males. These findings were recently published in the journal Scientific Reports.

In a collaborative project between Karolinska institutet, Karolinska university hospital, Uppsala university and Turku university led by professor Agneta Nordberg, KI, has differences in pathological changes been studied using PET tracers in brain tissue from different genetic variants of hereditary Alzheimer's disease compared with sporadic Alzheimer's disease.

Johan Rehnberg at ARC is awarded FORTE grants totalling SEK 2.4 million for a postdoc position in the Netherlands to conduct research on "Improving public health in the elderly population: is there a contradiction between efficiency and inequality?".