News archive

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have investigated how a newly developed algorithm in connection with gene analysis can be used to improve the possibilities of preventing premature vascular disease and death in individuals with the hereditary lipid disorder, familial hypercholesterolemia. The findings, published in the Journal of Internal Medicine, show how the method can lead to faster and more cost-effective investigations in such families.

On 29 May, the government announced that as of 15 June, higher education institutions may return to campus-based teaching. The recommendations issued by the Swedish Public Health Agency for containing the spread of the virus apply as much to HEIs as they do to general society, and require a responsible approach to the planning of a return to campus-based teaching.

By end of 2021 Sweden will probably have up to 100,000 Long COVID patients and globally there will be more than 20 million. These estimates are based on current rates of infection and that 10% of patients have longer term symptoms after a COVID-19 infection.

Center for Alzheimer Research (CAR) has started a working group on sex and gender differences in dementia. The group is led by Assistant professors Shireen Sindi and Daniel Ferreira at the Division for Clinical Geriatrics. It's their first working group and they are excited to see how this group will evolve.

Hi there, Ying Wang, PhD student at the Division of Neurogeriatrics! On June 23 you will defend your thesis “Neuroinflammation and its resolution in Alzheimer's disease". What is the main focus of your thesis?

It´s graduation time at Karolinska Institutet! On the third and fourth of June we celebrate graduating bachelor’s and masters’ students through live-streamed ceremonies from Aula Medica. We want to wish you the best of luck on your future endeavors and say great job – you did it!

Hi there, Gita Rajan, PhD student at the Division of Family Medicine and Primary Care! On June 22 you will defend your thesis “Sexual violence - epidemiology, treatment and access to health care". What is the main focus of your thesis?

An article in Nature Reviews Nephrology summarizes the significant role of nitric oxide in the regulation of renal function and the link to cardiovascular disease and diabetes. Mattias Carlström, Associate Professor of Physiology at KI, is the author behind the article.

More knowledge is needed about risk factors for recurrent cardiovascular disease and myocardial infarction. In his thesis, doctor Joel Ohm at the Department of Medicine, Solna, Karolinska Institutet, describes how socio-economic factors have a major impact on secondary prevention efforts and prognosis. The results may have an impact on people who have survived myocardial infarction.

A Swedish COVID-19 data portal has now been in operation for a year and forms part of a European network aimed at promoting data sharing and access to data-related resources. The data portal has contributed to increased support for a large number of research projects and publications.

By analyzing 4,000 drugs’ ability to affect cells’ capacity to produce proteins, researchers at Karolinska Institutet found that an anticancer therapy currently trialed in human patients works differently than previously thought. As many human diseases have alterations in this process called translation, the new knowledge contributes to a better understanding of how translation is regulated and the biological routes that regulate it. The study is published in PLOS Biology.

University students in Stockholm reported no tangible differences in depression, anxiety or stress during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, a longitudinal study at Sophiahemmet University and Karolinska Institutet finds. The study is published today in Scandinavian Journal of Public Health.

What lessons have we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic and what are the primary hurdles that must be removed to attain equitable and sustainable health? These were the focal points of the Stockholm Life Science Conference 2021 that took place on the 25th of May. Three areas that were identified as important conditions for future innovations were collaboration, communication and accessibility to data.

Joana Pereira officially starts as research group leader today, June 1, although she has been managing her own group for a while now.

This year, The Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) ranks KI as the fourth best university worldwide regarding nursing. Only the University of Pennsylvania (USA), Griffith University (Australia) and Johns Hopkins University (USA) rank higher, making nursing at KI number one in Europe.

Hi there, Anna Svensson-Raskh, PhD student at the Division of Physiotherapy! On June 18 you will defend your thesis “Mobilization immediately after elective abdominal surgery – Respiratory effects and patients' and healthcare professionals' experiences". What is the main focus of your thesis?

The human papillomavirus (HPV) can cause cancer and many countries run national vaccination programmes to minimise the risk. Studies involving researchers at German Cancer Research Center, Karolinska Institutet and Tampere University now report on the longitudinal effect of common HPV vaccines. The results, which are published in The Journal of Infectious Diseases and Lancet Infectious Diseases, show lasting protection against more HPV variants than the vaccines were developed for.

Studying the implementation of public health interventions typically involves the identification of “facilitators” and “barriers”. In the case of active tuberculosis case-finding (also referred to as community-based tuberculosis screening), many studies have documented facilitators and barriers, but only few have explored the “how-to” of capitalizing on facilitators and overcoming barriers to put active case-finding into practice. This new study contributes to filling this gap.

A major effort to strengthen KI's strategic collaboration capacity has recently been achieved. This is a Vinnova-funded initiative that has been ongoing over the past three years. The lessons now learned and the results from the projects will form a natural part of KI's research and education.

Continuous skin-to-skin contact starting immediately after delivery even before the baby has been stabilised can reduce mortality by 25 per cent in infants with a very low birth weight. This according to a study in low- and middle-income countries coordinated by the WHO on the initiative of researchers at Karolinska Institutet published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Hi there, Lorena Galán-Acosta, PhD student at the Division of Neurogeriatrics! On June 17 you will defend your thesis “Recombinant BRICHOS domains delivered over the blood-brain barrier : a possible way to treat Alzheimer's disease”. What is the main focus of your thesis?

We are seeking healthy subjects for a brain imaging study on the effect of neuronal stimulation on learning and reward processing.

In a study published in Nature Metabolism, researchers at the department of Cell and Molecular Biology developed a novel technique to identify small molecules that can make insulin-producing β-cells divide.

Hi there, Sarah Wallcook, PhD student at the Division of Occupational Therapy! On June 10 you will defend your thesis “Conditions of everyday technology use and its Interplay in the lives of older adults with and without dementia”. What is the main focus of your thesis?

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet, University of Oxford and University of Copenhagen have shown that elevated levels of lipids known as ceramides can be associated with a ten-fold higher risk of death from cardiovascular disease. Treatment with liraglutide could keep the ceramide levels in check, compared with placebo. The results have been published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and UCL have identified a general factor called ‘decision acuity’ that affects young people's decision-making ability, independent of IQ, and is associated with good social functioning. The results have been published in the journal Neuron.

For decades, scientists have studied the health benefits of exercise – but this research has largely ignored the fact that how you spend the rest of the day may also matters. Instead of the recommendation that everyone should strive to achieve 150 minutes of weekly exercise, our results show physical activity recommendations can been more personalized. People can adopt a combination of activity that works best for them.

An exciting new way has been found in which the body senses a bacterial infection within 4 hours and uses nerve pathways to trigger an immune response in distant organs. The speed by which an infection can be identified, and how the defence mechanisms are triggered is critical to infection outcome.

Meet the 16 COVID-X Data and AI Solutions selected in the Open Call #1

Congratulations to Elin Hardell at the department of Oncology-Pathology who gets award for best thesis 2020 from Swedish society of pathology!

Young children who practice visual working memory and reasoning tasks improve their math skills more than children who focus on spatial rotation exercises, according to a large study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings support the notion that training spatial cognition can enhance academic performance and that when it comes to math, the type of training matters. The study is published in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.

There are many questions surrounding how best to communicate your operations and how to find the right support to do so. In the communications subproject within the project Coherent operational support, work has been started to make it even clearer what communications support is available – the goal is to produce a kind of service catalogue for KI's employees.

The common skin disease atopic eczema (AE) impacts heavily on the life quality and general health of sufferers. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now evaluated its treatment with internet-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (iCBT). The study suggests that patients feel better after iCBT compared with a control group who received only traditional treatment. The results, which are published in JAMA Dermatology, might eventually make important care available to a large patient group.

With this postdoctoral programme SRP Diabetes aims to support the next generation of exceptional young scientists within the diabetes area, including both experimental and clinical research. To promote cross-fertilization between research environments, we encourage scientists wishing to pursue postdoctoral training in a different university from where they carried out doctoral studies. Openings for fellowships in 5 different laboratories at Karolinska Institutet.
Deadline June 6!

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have investigated the use of low dose venetoclax, an experimental drug, for the treatment of the heterogeneous cancer disease multiple myeloma in patients who had relapsed on standard therapies. The findings are published in the American Journal of Hematology and provide new hope for the treatment of multiple myeloma.

Hi there, Haohao Wu, PhD student at the Department of Neuroscience at Karolinska Institutet! You will defend your thesis entitled "The molecular basis of the development and diversity of proprioceptive neurons : a story of surviving and thriving" on 21 May 2021.

The Department of Global Public Health will be involved in several courses in the new 6-year medical program that begins in Spring 2021.

Glaucoma involves a high risk of losing sight. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and St. Erik Eye Hospital, among others, have now studied the effects of nicotinamide, the amide of vitamin B₃, on animal and cell models for glaucoma. The study, published in Redox Biology, may be a future neuroprotective therapy in glaucoma in humans. A clinical trial will start in the autumn.

Social anxiety disorder can cause considerable suffering in children and adolescents and, for many with the disorder, access to effective treatment is limited. Researchers at Centre for Psychiatry Research at Karolinska Institutet and Region Stockholm have now shown that internet-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy is an efficacious and cost-effective treatment option. The study is published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry.

New research at Karolinska Institutet suggests a link between psychosis and a genetic change that affects the brain's immune system. The study published in Molecular Psychiatry may impact the development of modern medicines for bipolar disorder or schizophrenia.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) in children and adolescents is associated with impaired education and worse general health later in life. Access to specialist treatment is often limited. According to a study from Centre for Psychiatry Research at Karolinska Institutet and Region Stockholm, internet-delivered cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) can be as effective as conventional CBT. The study, published in the prestigious journal JAMA, can help make treatment for OCD more widely accessible.

Hi there, Konstantinos Poulakis, PhD student at the Division of Clinical Geriatrics! On May 28 you will defend your thesis “Alzheimer’s disease heterogeneity assessment with MRI biomarkers and unsupervised statistical learning”. What is the main focus of your thesis?

More than one year ago, Inika Prasad had the idea of arranging a TEDx event when picking up a book about public speaking at an airport. Together with her classmate Lukas Lehtonen they turned the idea into reality. On May 27, TEDxKI From Mirage to Oasis takes place – the first TEDx event at KI in a decade.

MRSA skin infections are often treated with intravenous injection of antibiotics, which can cause significant side effects and promote the development of resistant bacterial strains. To solve these problems, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden are developing a microneedle patch that delivers antibiotics directly into the affected skin area. New results published in Advanced Materials Technologies show that the microneedle patch effectively reduces MRSA bacteria in the skin.

Karolinska Institutet (KI) has been awarded a grant from Sida for a two and a half year capacity development project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Somalia. The project aims to support the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development.

Low levels of serotonin in the brain are seen as a possible cause of depression and many antidepressants act by blocking a protein that transports serotonin away from the nerve cells. A brain imaging study at Karolinska Institutet now shows that the average level of the serotonin transporter increased in a group of 17 individuals who recovered from depression after cognitive behavioural therapy. The results are published in the journal Translational Psychiatry.

Thirteen KI researchers have received funding from the Heart-Lung Foundation for their research on the new coronavirus. The grants total SEK 6.5 million, with approximately 40 per cent of the grants being distributed by the Heart-Lung Foundation (2021). The focus of the research is on the aftermath of COVID-19 where the disease has caused late complications on the heart, vessels and lungs. A total of SEK 15.7 million was distributed to 30 research projects at six different universities.

Initially, the project was to focus on the budget process in externally funded research projects. But it became clear, quite early on, that something else was to be prioritised. Ideas on how to better support researchers emerged, based on the vision of a harmonised professional service.

Charlotte Oja, PhD student at the Division of Family Medicine and Primary Care, will defend her thesis “Upholding family relationships in a context of increasing awareness of parental illness” on June 4.

Older people with kidney disease have a higher risk of dementia, and the risk increases with the rate and stage of kidney function decline. That is according to a large observational study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, published in the journal Neurology. The findings stress the significance of screening and monitoring for dementia in persons with kidney disease, the researchers say.