News archive

In this weeks issue of New England Journal of Medicine Nicolas Pejovic and Susanna Myrnerts Höök report the results from the hitherto largest randomized trial comparing laryngeal mask airway to the standard face mask when resuscitating asphyxiated newborn infants.

KI Culture Day 2020 is a cultural Christmas cracker packed with music, art, comedy and science. The two-hour event is being organised with the Stockholm House of Culture and City Theatre (Kulturhuset) and will be live streamed to the public on 2 December at 3.00 p.m.

Concerns have been raised that the use of a common group of medications called RAS inhibitors could facilitate SARS-CoV-2 infection, impact COVID-19 disease severity and worsen prognosis. However, in a new nationwide registry-based study from Karolinska Institutet, including almost 1.4 million patients, use of RAS inhibitors was not associated with increased risk of hospitalisation or death from COVID-19. The study has been published in the European Journal of Heart Failure.

Female reproductive toxicity has long been recognized as a research area with many knowledge gaps, and current regulatory toxicology methods have limited possibilities to detect disruption of ovarian function by chemical exposures.

It is largely unknown why influenza infections lead to an increased risk of bacterial pneumonia. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now described important findings leading to so-called superinfections, which claim many lives around the world every year. The study is published in the journal PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and can also contribute to research on COVID-19.

On Tuesday morning alarming and ominous signals came from Iran that the death sentence against the former KI researcher and Swedish citizen Ahmadreza Djalali might soon be carried out.

Hi there Giulia Grande, PhD student at the Aging Research Center (ARC). You will be defending your thesis entitled “Development of dementia in older adults: the body-mind connection” on 11 December 2020. Could you give us a brief summary?

On Thursday November 26, the changing rooms will close. They will remain closed until further notice.

We wish to congratulate Axel Abelein at BioNut who has received Formas research project grant for early-career researchers for a project on Development of new protein-based biomaterials for sustainable purification of heavy metals from water.

Immunotherapy for cancer has made great advances and many patients can now receive effective treatments that were not available ten years ago. However, there are certain types of cancer that do not respond to existing immunotherapy. A study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) reports on a new kind of immunotherapy that gives hope of more treatment options for cancer in the future.

The virtual SPARKS conference held on 2-3 December will gather a network of global leaders in public policy and research to facilitate the exchange of knowledge on social protection and health. Knut Lönnroth is the founder of the SPARKS Network and Professor of Social Medicine.

There are known differences in the survival rates of women and men with lung cancer. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet set out to investigate potential reasons behind this disparity, such as the presence of other underlying diseases and smoking status. The study, which was published in Chest, shows that women have better survival rates after lung cancer surgery than men, independent of other factors.

The Human Protein Atlas, a Swedish initiative, is turning 20. To celebrate the anniversary, the HPA consortium is launching a new website that combines atlas facts with breathtaking films of the human body and an updated version of the protein database. Researchers from Karolinska Institutet are involved in many different ways in the project.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have studied the incidence and regional distribution of Alzheimer’s disease biomarkers in the brains of people with Down’s syndrome. The results can bring new possibilities for earlier diagnosis and preventive treatment of dementia. The study is published in Molecular Neurodegeneration.

In her thesis, Shadi Azam studied the association between established breast cancer risk factors with mammographic density change over time and mammographic microcalcifications by using data from the prospective KARMA cohort.

Worry about COVID-19 dominates some people’s lives in a way that has an impact on their health. A group of researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has developed a digital CBT programme that significantly reduced the participants’ unhelpful worry about the pandemic. The study is published in Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics and the programme is available through 1177 Vårdguiden.

Women with breast cancer whose eggs or ovarian tissue were frozen had more children after their diagnosis than women who did not undergo fertility preservation using those methods before start of cancer treatment. That is according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, published in JAMA Oncology. According to the researchers, the result highlights the importance of reproductive counseling and fertility preservation for women who are diagnosed with cancer at a young age.

Hi Axel Leppert, PhD student at the Division of Neurogeriatrics! On December 11 you will defend your thesis “Molecular basis for chaperone activities of the BRICHOS domain against different types of clumpy clients – a route to prevent amyloid toxicity”. What’s the main focus of the thesis?

The global shutdown during the pandemic is particularly harmful to children and teenagers in the poorer parts of the world, said Professor Anna Mia Ekström during an ethics seminar held at KI in November. Also participating at the seminar was state epidemiologist Anders Tegnell.

Thirteen researchers connected to Karolinska Institutet are on the 2020 list of highly cited researchers presented by Clarivate, the company behind Web of Science.

Knowledge about the influence of lifestyle and environmental factors on diabetes risk is important as these factors are potentially modifiable and may be targeted in the prevention of diabetes.

Recent data suggest that adults may experience long-term symptoms after COVID-19 infection, but if such symptoms also occur in children is still unknown. Children tend to have milder COVID-19 than adults, but in a case-report from Sweden, Professor and pediatrician Jonas F Ludvigsson describes five children with potential “long COVID”. These findings, together with a systematic review of long COVID in children, are published in the journal Acta Paediatrica.

Karolinska Institutet have been awarded a grant of SEK 290 million from the Swedish Cancer Society. NVS researchers Maria Hagströmer and Linda Björkhem-Bergman are among the recipients.

One of the researchers who received fundings from the Swedish Cancer Society on November 10, 2020 is Professor Anna Martling at the research group Colorectal Surgery, the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery. The Cancer Foundation contributes a total of SEK 18 million to two research projects concerning colorectal cancer.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report promising results from an in vitro combination therapy against COVID-19. In a study published in EMBO Molecular Medicine, the researchers show that a combination of remdesivir, an approved drug against COVID-19, and hrsACE2, a medicine currently in phase II trials for COVID-19 treatment, reduced the viral load of SARS-CoV-2 and inhibited viral replication in cell cultures and organoids.

Together with Stiftelsen Silviahemmet, Karolinska Institutet has developed a new online course on dementia; “Dementia from Cell to Society”. The course offers a unique multi-professional perspective on caring for people with dementia.

Next autumn KI will launch a new medical programme to gradually replace the current one. The Swedish Higher Education Authority (UKÄ) has now granted Karolinska Institutet degree-awarding powers for the new programme, making KI one of seven Swedish universities authorised to issue medical degrees.

What does the defense against bacterial infections have in common with hearing or fertilization? Key players in these and many other crucial biological processes belong to a large family of extracellular proteins using a common polymerization engine known as “zona pellucida (ZP) module”. Detailed information on how ZP module proteins look like in their functional polymeric state has so far remained elusive. Now researchers at KI have finally shed light on this long-standing question.

We congratulate Dr. Magnus Dalén, at the Thoracic Surgery research group, the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, who has been awarded Ingegerd and Viking Olov Björk Memorial Scholarship 2020.

The rheumatoid arthritis drug baricitinib can block viral entry and reduce mortality in patients with moderate to severe COVID-19, according to translational research by an international team coordinated by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden. The findings, published in the journal Science Advances, support the continuation of ongoing randomized clinical trials.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been awarded a grant of SEK 290 million from the Swedish Cancer Society, meaning that over one third of the total grant of SEK 709 million, divided amongst eleven universities, is going to cancer research at KI. Two of the recipients are associate professor Mattias Rantalainen and Professor Fang Fang.

A new study from Karolinska Institutet shows that 1 in 5 patients admitted for acute myocardial infarction are infected with Helicobacter pylori and that it is possible to introduce screening for this bacterium in routine care. The results are published in the American Heart Journal. The researchers are now planning a large randomised trial to find out whether screening and treatment of the infection reduces the risk of stomach bleeding and improves cardiovascular outcomes in this patient group.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet receive SEK 290 million from Cancerfonden. Three of these researchers who receive the grants are Rimma Axelsson, Rainer Heuchel and Magnus Nilsson - all belonging to CLINTEC

The Swedish cancer society has on November 11th awarded 709 million SEK to cancer research in Sweden. Among them were ten researchers from the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition (BioNut) at KI, who were granted a total of 45.2 million SEK. The grants cover the years 2021- 2023.

We wish to congratulate all our researchers to the grants received!

Early-life events, such as the exposure to air pollutants, increases the risk of chronic lung disease in young adulthood, according to new results by researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, published in the European Respiratory Journal and Thorax. The studies add to the growing evidence that chronic lung disease in adulthood can be traced back to childhood.

Girls who have been sexually abused run a much higher risk of psychiatric ill health with depression and anxiety, leading to possible alcohol abuse and suicide. This persists even after intervention, reports a study from Karolinska Institutet published in European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry.

Karolinska Institutet has together with its partners in Sub-Saharan Africa kick-started implementation of a new online training programme about sustainable health for professionals in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Somalia and Uganda. The aim of the programme is to, based on the Agenda 2030, develop capacity to use innovative approaches to strengthen the health sector in the participants’ countries.

Hi Hazal Haytural, PhD student at the Division of Neurogeriatrics, NVS! On November 27 you will defend your thesis “Unraveling pathogenic proteins and pathways in Alzheimer disease: A focus on proteomics”. What’s the main focus of the thesis?

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have explored all COVID-19 research published during the initial phase of the pandemic. The results, which were achieved by using a machine learning-based approach and published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, will make it easier to direct future research to where it is most needed.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have investigated the association between certain immune markers in neonates and the risk of later developing autism spectrum disorder (ASD). They found that mid-levels of a classical marker of inflammation, C-reactive protein, were associated with the lowest risk for ASD – whereas too much or not enough were linked to increased risk. The study is published in the scientific journal Biological Psychiatry.

KI holds its position in the Times Higher Education Reputation rankings published on 3 November 2020.

The Swedish Research Council has awarded five-year grants totalling SEK 442,680,000 to 110 researchers at Karolinska Institutet. All in all, the SRC is awarding almost SEK 1 billion to 247 researchers in the fields of medicine and health.

European research consortium LipiDiDiet finds long-lasting and broadly benefiting effects of nutritional intervention in early Alzheimer’s

Professor Grigori Orlovsky, at the Department of Neuroscience, died on 26 October after a long period of illness.

Federico Pietrocola has been awarded 400 000 SEK in start-up grant from the Jeanssons Foundations.

A new study has found that a commonly prescribed anti-depressant may halt growth of a type of cancer known as childhood sarcoma, at least in mice and laboratory cell experiments. The findings, from researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and MD Anderson Cancer Centre in Texas, ignite hope of novel treatment strategies against this disease. The study is published in the journal Cancer Research.

We wish to congratulate Luca Jovine, Juha Kere, Janne Johansson and Eckardt Treuter at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, who have been awarded grants from the Swedish Research Council within the area of Medicine and Health as well as the area of Natural and Engineering Sciences for the years 2020-2024.

Congratulations Jorge Ruas, newly appointed Professor of molecular physiology at the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology, Karolinska Institutet.

Professor András Simon of the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB) and two fellow researchers in Canada and Switzerland have been awarded a grant of almost SEK 100 million by the European Research Council. The aim of the project, which goes under the acronym Salamandra, is to understand how locomotor functions can be restored after damage to the nervous system.

By the time KI-researcher and nurse Martina Gustavsson arrived in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Abeba in September, the staff at the city’s COVID center had been working every day since April. Tired and worn out, they were caring for more than 200 patients. They had not met their families for almost five months. Yet they were determined to carry on.