News archive

Every year, 135 people die by suicide in Sweden’s transport system, with about 85 of these occurring in rail transport. Johan Fredin Knutzén investigates intelligent measures that can save lives.

Young Swedes are drinking less alcohol, but – as Isabella Gripe’s doctoral thesis shows – this is not because they have moved onto smoking hash.

Fanna Ndow Norrby had never smoked or used snus when she was 30, but then she started using nicotine pouches. Here she talks about her journey in and out of addiction.

Principal Satu Harnesk has noticed an increase in snus use among students. But when she tries to talk about the health aspect, it is difficult to get through.

Anna-Karin Trångteg works as a tobacco cessation counsellor at a youth clinic. Here she explains how the young people she meets view different types of nicotine addiction.

The use of new nicotine products such as white snus and e-cigarettes has increased significantly among young people in Sweden. Marketed as tobacco-free, these products often contain high levels of nicotine and are flavoured in ways that attracts new target groups. But what do we really know about the risks?

Karin Garming-Legert researches mucosal changes in the mouth. She explains that those who use white snus nicotine pouches sometimes exhibit a different type of oral alteration not previously seen.

Tanja Tomson and her colleagues have developed a support tool for healthcare professionals whose patients want to quit nicotine.

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.

Ullakarin Nyberg is a researcher at the Center for Psychiatry Research at Karolinska Institutet. She also works clinically as a psychiatrist, part of the time at a unit for breast cancer patients. At the end of 2018, she contracted the disease herself.

Anna Sylvan was diagnosed with breast cancer in the autumn of 2021. Three tumours were treated with surgery, chemotherapy, radiation, and anti-hormones. In this interview she talks about her experience.

Can breast cancer patients who exercise get better results from their chemotherapy? And if so, should they receive treatment that includes exercise? This will be investigated in an international study led by researcher Jana de Boniface.

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.

There is a lot going on in breast cancer research. A new AI tool is trying to fine-tune the screening program, another is helping pathologists make diagnoses, and new drugs are being tested and approved. This could save more lives. But there is still no answer to the trickiest question of all: Why does breast cancer occur?

The 2023 AI Swede of the Year feels no need to be at the center of research. Yet that is exactly where he is. The orthopaedic surgeon and researcher Max Gordon was an early adopter of artificial intelligence. Now everyone else wants to know how to do it.

If you find cleaning boring, you might think of it as a form of exercise. But is that true? Anna-Karin Welmer, senior lecturer in physiotherapy, gives us the answer.

In the healthcare setting, keeping things clean can be vital to prevent the spread of dangerous bacteria. But in a household, what’s best for your health – to live pretty dirty or to be a clean freak? Read our interviews with the researchers who have a pure interest in cleaning.

High-dose pressurized oxygen can stress out old immune cells, leaving behind a younger, better functioning immune system. It helped with acute COVID, and now Anders Kjellberg is testing the method for post-covid as well.

The abundance of unhealthy food in society means that obesity doctor and researcher Ylva Trolle Lagerros is working against certain headwinds. But the arrival of new medications have made her job more enjoyable. In parallel, she has developed apps that provide patients with support.

It is common for middle-aged women with suspected myocardial infarction to be diagnosed with broken heart syndrome instead, which is triggered by stress and grief. Per Tornvall hopes that his research will result in more people receiving the correct diagnosis and fewer people suffering a relapse. He is now testing to see if internet CBT may help to heal the heart.

More and more researchers understand the importance of including the patients' experiences when planning scientific studies. Meet three people who have been hired as experts in their own illness.

Chewing gum, acupressure, vaccine. There have been numerous attempts to stop nausea. We have interviewed the researchers who are examining an important revolutionary mechanism that makes us feel sick.

Thanks to the research conducted by Christian Rück and others there is currently research on all compulsive related disorders. He is now venturing into a perhaps even more difficult and important task: Suicide prevention.

Sten Lundin set his apartment on fire and was convicted of arson. It turned out that he had bipolar disorder and the care he got helped him on feet again. "Life can sometimes turn around. I want everyone to know that", says Sten Lundin.

She was deprived of liberty for over ten years. "I feel a great deal of sadness that it took so long before I received proper care", says Jenny.

Who is at the highest risk of committing violent acts - and who is not? Forensic psychiatrist Jonas Forsman's researches involves an instrument that can, in a best case scenario, simplify the assessment of most forensic psychiatric patients.

Anette Johansson conducts research on what separates psychotic people who commit crimes from psychotic people who do not.

7.5 years That is the average treatment time for a person who has been sentenced to forensic psychiatric care. This is 2.5 years longer than what previous figures has lead us to believe.

In 2022, roughly 350 people were sentenced to forensic psychiatric care. There is a unique borderland between the judicial system and healthcare, in which a person who has completed their medical treatment can be prevented from being discharged. At the same time, many patients are saying that they have benefited from the care. And fewer people relapse into crime after they have received forensic psychiatric care than they do after being imprisoned.

Hearing loss can lead to anxiety, sadness and depression. Gerhard Andersson has been researching a treatment for those who have difficulty accepting hearing loss.

Mikael Wiehe's hearing loss affects both himself and those around him. Nowadays, he prefers to perform alone, and restaurant visits only work if the sound environment is right. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Ida Bäckström suddenly lost her hearing - first in the right ear and then in the left. Now she hears with the help of cochlear implants. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Pernilla Videhult Pierre researches how different substances can damage hearing - or provide protection in emergency situations. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Some children are born with hearing loss in only one ear. What to do then? The issue is more difficult than one might think.

One billion young people risk hearing loss in the future if they continue to listen to their headphones at too high a volume. To develop treatments, researchers need to solve the mysteries of the cochlea - well hidden in the inner ear, a pea-sized organ embedded in bone a few centimeters inside the outer ear.

A watercolour painting, anatomical artwork or a whole house dedicated to the body. When scientists turn to art, science takes on new forms.

Solving the logic of life. This may seem like an overwhelming task. But for Professor Rickard Sandberg, this is the objective.

How should healthcare providers identify bacteria or other pathogens in the blood of sepsis patients as quickly as possible? Volkan Özenci is focusing on this in his research. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Some patients get sepsis because of hospital-acquired infections. A new digital system is now being implemented to find these patients by constantly scanning medical records for signs of sepsis. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Just over two years ago, Arne Persson had a bad fall while walking his dog in the woods. He struck his coccyx badly but was able to get home. The pain just grew and grew over the next few days, so in the end he went to A&E at the hospital. After an X-ray, he was sent home because nothing was broken. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Petra Kormo’s second baby was born on Wednesday, 4 January 2017. Everything went well with the birth, but Petra developed a fever after she arrived home. She felt weaker and sicker for every day that passed. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Sepsis has a way of flying under the radar. Public awareness of the life-threatening disease is low, and official statistics are misleading. Now researchers are using special alarm systems and AI to increase detection. This article is part of an in-depth feature from KI's popular science magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Rumours spread faster than ever nowadays thanks to social media, and it is easy to get carried away. Some people are also inherently more vulnerable to conspiracy theories. However, sceptics’ concerns should be addressed, not dismissed, say researchers who are studying people’s willingness to take different kinds of vaccines.

Deep grief has both mental and physical health consequences for the sufferer that can take decades to heal. People can even die of grief. It is therefore important to try to alleviate the effects of severe grief, something that we in Sweden aren’t particularly good at.

The causes of complex diseases can be identified by representing them in the form of mathematically produced networks. This method was used to find bacteria that drive atopic dermatitis, for example.

When she was 14 years old Jessica Strid was treated for cancer and was told that it would be difficult for her to get pregnant. Today she has two children. ”I am very grateful”, she says.

Many young people whose fertility have been impaired due to cancer treatment can today be helped to become parents. Kenny Rodriguez-Wallberg, Adjunct Professor at the Department of Oncology and Pathology at Karolinska Institutet and Senior Consultant at Karolinska University Hospital, answers six common questions.

Erik Vismer and his wife sought help from an IVF clinic to get children. What they didn’t expect was the effort and time that the process demanded from them. Read an in-depth article series from KI’s Swedish popular science magazine.

According to the WHO, almost 50 million couples worldwide are involuntarily childless while demand for assisted fertilisation is expected to grow as treatments have become both more effective and more widely accessible. Read the first article from a in-depth series about infertility from KI’s Swedish popular science magazine.

Hopefully we are nearing the end of the pandemic. But the virus is still there and scientists expect that new variants may emerge. Making us more sick, however, is not on the viral agenda.