News archive

Hi there Gylfi Ólafsson! You recently defended your thesis "Health economic aspects of low back pain" at the Department of Learning, Informatics, Management and Ethics. What is it about?​​​​​​​

What happens in the brain when we feel discomfort? Researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden are now one step closer to finding the answer. In a new study published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry they identify which pathways in the mouse brain control behaviour associated with aversion.

Learning what is dangerous by watching a video or being told (known as social learning) has just as strong an effect on our decision-making as first-hand experience of danger, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden report. The results of the study, which is published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), can help to explain why we take irrational decisions.

Professor Mitchell Lazar at Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia has been selected as recipient of the Rolf Luft Award 2019.

Knowledge of a newly discovered genetic disorder, which means that a person cannot produce the protein TXNIP (thioredoxin interacting protein) in their cells, can open for the development of new diabetes drugs. This is shown in a study from Karolinska Institutet published in the journal Diabetes.

Using puzzle pieces from four different DNA analyses, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been able to map three extremely complex chromosome aberrations. This has given families answers about the cause of their children’s serious symptoms. The study was published in the scientific journal PLOS Genetics and the goal is to produce a test to be used in the clinic.

New research on how cancer mutations influence a certain type of receptor on the cell membrane opens the way for the development of tailored drugs for certain cancers, such as rectal cancer and lung cancer.

Sara Riggare appointed “Swede of the year in medicine” by Fokus Magazine!

Acute porphyria is a group of uncommon diseases that can cause severe, potentially life-threatening attacks of abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting and paralysis. Liver transplantation is currently the only effective treatment available for the most seriously afflicted patients. A clinical trial conducted in collaboration with researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden now shows that a new drug candidate can prevent attacks in these patients. The study is published in The New England Journal of

Karolinska Microscopic Imaging in Thrombosis & Hemostasis, KARMITH, Core Facility.

For reasons that are unclear, schizophrenia patients have fewer connections between the neurons in the brain. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and Massachusetts General Hospital, USA, have now succeeded in creating human cell models that show that there is an excessive degradation of connections in the brain of these patients, and they have been able to link this to a genetic risk variant for the disease.

Katja Petzold receives the Swedish Research Council’s consolidator grant for her project “Understanding ribosomal movements to develop new drug targets”.

MTC awards were presented to the following recipients from the Head of Department Susanne Nylén this December.

The research project is led by Ritva Rissanen, postdoc at the Department of Public Health Sciences, and will investigate sick leave patterns when returning to work after a work-related injury, among young adults.

Susanne Nylén has been appointed Head of Department for the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology (MTC).

The courses Leadership and Organization Development 1 (30 credits), course code: 2QA079 and Leadership and Organization Development 2 (30 credits), course code: 2QA203 were given for the last time during 2016/17 and 2017/18.

Professor Klas Kärre at MTC has been awarded the Hilda och Alfred Erikssons Prize for his "important contribution to basic and applied immunology, specializing in tumour, transplantation, and infection immunology research".

Subpopulations of oligodendrocytes, myelin-producing cells in the brain that are targeted by the immune system in multiple sclerosis (MS), are altered in MS and might therefore have additional roles in the disease than previously described. The results are published in the journal Nature, in a study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and University of Edinburgh in the UK.

A new study shows that there is a very limited regeneration of cells in the brain of patients diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS). These findings underline the importance of treating MS at an early stage of the disease progression, when the affected cells can repair the damage as they are not replaced by new ones. The results are published in the journal Nature by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and Uppsala University.

The EU agency GenderNet recently decided on grants for 13 international collaborations. Five of these projects have partners at KI. In total about SEK 16.6 million is granted to KI. The projects include sex-and-gender perspective in their respective subject areas.

Hi there Jens Jacob Fredriksson. You recently defended your doctoral thesis “How can health care organizations create value?: business model explorations”.

A cohort study of approximately 142 000 Swedish patients with severe mental illness show reduced psychiatric morbidly associated with use of anti-cholesterol drugs, blood pressure drugs and medicines used for diabetes. The study was led by Christina Dalman at Karolinska Institutet in a collaboration with University College London.

Eva Doorakkers from the group Upper GI Surgery will defend her thesis "Helicobacter pylori eradication treatment and the risk of gastric and oesophageal cancer" on January 25th, 2019. Main Supervisor is Nele Brusselaers.