News archive

Elevated concentrations of fluoride can occur in well water, and in some countries, it is added to drinking water to counteract caries in the population. A study from Karolinska Institutet now supports a few previous studies indicating that exposure to fluoride during the fetal stage or early childhood may impair cognition in children. The study is published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.

In animal studies, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have found a possible mechanism for how the artificial sweetener aspartame may contribute to atherosclerosis – a common cause of cardiovascular disease and disease of the blood vessels in the brain. The study is published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Stockholm Trio (Karolinska Institutet, KTH Royal Institute of Technology & Stockholm University) and University College London (UCL) invite you to express interest in two days of workshops in London, the 8-9 April 2025.

Adrián Carballo Casla has recently been awarded a Forte Starting Grant 2024. His research project aims to tailor dietary recommendations to the unique needs of older adults, potentially leading to healthier and longer lives.

An abnormal BMI in children – be it high or low – can now be associated with impaired lung function, but if their BMI is normalised before they reach adulthood, the impairment can be offset, researchers from Karolinska Institutet report. Their results, which are based on data collected under the BAMSE project, are presented in The European Respiratory Journal.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, in collaboration with Sophiahemmet University and LongLife Active AB, have developed an AI-assisted mobile health app with the potential to promote lifestyle behaviours.

In a new study, Patricia Eustachio Colombo and her colleagues have developed suggestions for healthy and climate-friendly dietary patterns. Now it's just a matter of getting us to adopt them.

It is difficult to draw firm conclusions about how to eat and drink to avoid breast cancer. Dietary studies often rely on self-reporting, while dietary habits change over the course of a lifetime - both of which are complicated for researchers. But one link is well documented: even moderate alcohol consumption increases the risk of developing the disease, says Professor Alicja Wolk.

The project "A Healthy School Start" is a family support program developed by the research group Community Nutrition and Physical Activity at the Department of Global Public Health, to offer an adapted approach for student health and teachers to provide support to families with children on healthy lifestyles. The program has been positively received by politicians in Region Stockholm, who have now allocated funds in the budget for further dissemination.

A researcher at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet, has received SEK 4.97 million in research grants from FORTE for a project on “A mHealth intervention to promote healthy lifestyle behaviours from the start of life: The Health4Life trial”.

Vitamin C and other antioxidants stimulate the formation of new blood vessels in lung cancer tumours, a new study from Karolinska Institutet published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation shows. The discovery corroborates the idea that dietary supplements containing antioxidants can accelerate tumour growth and metastasis.

A new study demonstrates that the dietary fatty acid gamma-linolenic acid (GLA) derived from the mother's milk triggers a metabolic shift essential for heart cell maturation in newborn mice. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet contributed to the study published in Nature in May 2023.

While the relevance for human heart development still needs to be addressed, GLA is found in human breast milk and the GLA-activated nuclear receptors are highly conserved between mice and humans.

Congratulations to Professor Marie Löf at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition who has received MSEK 4.9 from the Kamprad Family Foundation for Entrepreneurship, Research & Charity. Her research project is on "Promoting positive mental health during pregnancy with a digital tool (HealthyMoms4MentalHealth-app): Effectiveness and implementation in maternity health care".

On December 16, 2022, the KI president inaugurated the Centre for Nutrition at Karolinska Institutet. More than 150 people attended the event with representatives from the funding agencies present; the Swedish Cancer Society, the Swedish Heart Lung Foundation and Formas.

To improve understanding of mental health, today’s symptom-based diagnoses need to be complemented with biological criteria accounting for differences between individuals and the sexes. A major EU-funded research project, coordinated by Uppsala University, will pursue an interdisciplinary path towards better strategies to protect vulnerable individuals from mental illness. Three research teams at Karolinska Institutet participate in the project.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have mapped how children are exposed to outdoor advertisement for food in order to better understand their food environment. The results are presented in a report produced by UNICEF Sweden and the Heart Lung Foundation, showing that advertising is dominated by ultra-processed foods. Unhealthy eating habits are important causes of poor health in Sweden and the current report shows that it is not just a public health issue, but also a children's right issue.

Karolinska Institutet hosted the annual meeting with the Swedish national Network in Epidemiology and Nutrition (NEON). The theme for this year’s meeting was: ”Digital lifestyle interventions and BigData in nutritional research”. Around a hundred researchers and practitioners in nutrition and epidemiology from all over Sweden met in Flemingsberg.

Marie Löf, at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, is a new Professor in Nutrition as of February 1st, 2022. Yesterday, October 13th, 2022, the inauguration of new professors at Karolinska Institutet took place with an installation ceremony in Aula Medica.

Three researchers at the Department of Biosciences and Nutriton, Karolinska Institutet, have received grants from the Novo Nordisk Foundation for their research, 2022.

Infants who were given a taste of peanut, milk, wheat and egg from the age of three months had a lower risk of developing a food allergy at the age of three years than controls, reports a study by researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Oslo in Norway published in The Lancet.

Congratulations to researchers at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition, Karolinska Institutet, who have received grants from "Henning och Johan Throne-Holst stiftelse" 2022.

Congratulations to Christine Delisle Nyström, who has been appointed Assistant Professor and docent in Nutrition, and to Rongrong Fan, who has been appointed docent in Cell- and Molecular Biology!

Congratulations to all the researchers at the Department of Biosciences and Nutrition (BioNut) who received funding from Cancerfonden 2022-2024. We would also like to highlight their special initiative: Fellowship in cancer research in primary prevention, which was awarded to one of our researchers.

BioNut researcher has received SEK 4.6 million in research grant from FORTE for a project on “Effects of increased ultra-processed food advertisement (outdoors and digital) exposure on behaviours associated with obesity development in Swedish adolescents, evaluated in a socioeconomic context.”

Obesity increases the risk of developing cancers of the digestive system and it is the person’s fat mass, rather than size, that is the main obesity-related risk factor for these cancer types, according to a new study published in the journal PLOS Medicine by researchers at the University of Cambridge and Karolinska Institutet.

Earlier studies have shown that supplementary vitamin D seems to provide a certain degree of protection against respiratory infections. A new study involving researchers from Karolinska Institutet has now made the most comprehensive synthesis to date of this connection. The study, which is published in the journal Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology, confirms that vitamin D protects against respiratory infections, a result that can have significance for the healthcare services.

Three researchers at Karolinska Institutet have been awarded the 2020 ERC Starting Grant: Niklas Björkström, Janina Seubert and Nils Landegren. Their projects concern resident organ-specific immune cells, the cognitive mechanisms behind our preference of certain foods, and sex-differences in the human immune system and the risk of autoimmune disease. In all, the European Research Council will support 436 early-career researchers with this prestigious grant.

Active lifestyle choices such as eating vegetables, exercising and quitting smoking can reduce the risk of chronic kidney disease, a new study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and Griffith University in Australia, reports. The study is published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.

Glutamine could help people with obesity reduce inflammation of fat tissue and reduce fat mass, according to a new study at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Oxford in the U.K. The researchers also show how glutamine levels can alter gene expression in several different cell types. However, more research is needed before glutamine supplementation may be recommended as a treatment for obesity. The study is published in the journal Cell Metabolism.

Progeria is a very rare disease that affects about one in 18 million children and results in premature aging and death in adolescence from complications of cardiovascular disease. In a study on mice and human cells, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and IFOM, the FIRC Institute of Molecular Oncology in Italy, have identified how antisense oligonucleotide therapies could be used as a new possible treatment option for the disease. The results are published in Nature Communications.

In a review of existing research, commissioned by a committee of the European Parliament, a group of European researchers has identified benefits of organic food production for human health. The researchers recommend the parliament to consider giving priority to certain organic production practices and their use also in conventional agriculture.

A new registry study, dismiss the long-debated association between celiac disease – gluten intolerance – and increased risk of autism spectrum disorders. The study was led from Karolinska Institutet and is now published in JAMA Psychiatry.