News archive

Ki researcher Daniel Berglind received 6 million SEK from Formas for a project to reconstruct schoolyards with greenery for a better environment and more physically active children in urban areas.

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.

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.

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.

There is a well-known relationship between good physical fitness at a young age and a lower risk of cardiovascular disease later in life. However, when researchers adjusted for familial factors by means of sibling analysis, they found a weaker association, although the link between high body mass index (BMI) and cardiovascular disease remained strong. The study, which was conducted by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and other universities, is published in JAMA Network Open.

Movement and physical activity were in focus when the KI Impact Challenge event was arranged for the first time after the pandemic. About 45 students from Karolinska Institutet were tasked to come up with what is needed to make young people become more physically active. To help them, they had 30 high school students and the various steps in design thinking, a systematic problem-solving method.

On the international news site The Conversation you can read an article by Logan Pendergrast and Juleen Zierath, of the Integrative Physiology research group, where they explain their latest findings on “Morning exercise burns more body fat, mouse study shows".

Physical activity at the right time of the day seems able to increase fat metabolism, at least in mice. A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Copenhagen in Denmark shows that mice that did exercise in an early active phase, which corresponds to morning exercise in humans, increased their metabolism more than mice that did exercise at a time when they usually rest. The results are published in the journal PNAS.

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.

Jiloan Hamad is a midfielder with Örebro SK and plays on Iraq’s national team, but getting the opportunity to play in a team at a young age was not obvious. Here he talks about how football became a big part of his life, and why he is passionate about being an ambassador for Generaion Pep, an organisation which works for health equity.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet present new findings about alcohol consumption reduced by training. The three related papers, published in Drug and Alcohol Dependence, report findings from the randomized controlled trial, FitForChange.

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

Hi Pernilla Sönnerfors, PhD student at the Division of Physiotherapy, NVS. On June 17 you will defend your thesis ”eHealth support for physical activity and exercise training in people with COPD”, what's the main focus of the thesis?

Medication for Parkinson's disease reduces many of the symptoms that affect patients, but often the problems associated with impaired balance and increased risk of falls and injuries remain. A new study in the journal NPJ Parkinson's Disease provides an in-depth picture of balance training as a treatment for Parkinson's. The partly disappointing results suggest that exercise programmes may need to be intensified or personalized to a greater extent, and that more research is required.

Exercise causes the body to release hundreds of signalling molecules that improve our health in different ways. Now, an international research team including researchers from Karolinska Institutet have mapped how these signals are released by different organs in mice following exercise at different times of the day. Their atlas of exercise metabolism, published in the journal Cell Metabolism, may in the long term contribute to more effective exercise therapies that are timed to the body clock.

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.

Hi Roman Kuster, PhD student at the Division of Physiotherapy! On March 12 you will defend your thesis “Advancing the measurement of sedentary behaviour – Classifying posture and physical (in-) activity”. What’s the main focus of the thesis?

As life expectancies rise, so does the risk of dementia. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have now studied how an active, non-smoking lifestyle can influence this correlation. The results, which are published in PLOS Medicine, suggest that good cardiovascular health gradually decreases the risk of dementia.

People with cancer who exercise generally have a better prognosis than inactive patients. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have found a likely explanation of why exercise helps slow down cancer growth in mice: Physical activity changes the metabolism of the immune system’s cytotoxic T cells and thereby improves their ability to attack cancer cells. The study is published in the journal eLife.

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.

Decades-long endurance training alters the activity of genes in human skeletal muscle that are important for metabolic health. This is according to a new study published in the journal Cell Reports by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of San Diego in the U.S. Sex differences found in untrained individuals were also dramatically reduced with long-term training. The results may have implications for metabolic disease prevention.

Physical exercise can act prophylactically for people with the metabolic syndrome and protect them against cardiovascular diseases, a new study from the Swedish School of Sport and Health Sciences, GIH, and Karolinska Institutet published in the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology reports. Even light physical exercise has been shown to have good prophylactic effects, for both women and men.

Babies born with low birth weights are more likely to have poor cardiorespiratory fitness later in life than their normal-weight peers. That is according to a study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden published in the journal JAHA. The findings underscore the importance of prevention strategies to reduce low birth weights even among those carried to at term delivery.

Meet your colleagues, while getting some activity and fresh air.
Wednesday: Akademiska Stråket 1, Bioclinicum, Solna
Friday: Blickagången 16, NEO, Flemingsberg
@ 12 am, the walk will be 30-40 minutes and at an easy pace.

As we grow older, our muscular function declines. A new study by researchers at Karolinska Institutet shows how an unexpectedly high number of mutations in the stem cells of muscles impair cell regeneration. This discovery may result in new medication to build stronger muscles even when in old age. The study is published in Nature Communications.

A new study from Karolinska Institutet shows that the same mechanisms behind the beneficial effects of exercise training on the brain also help to counteract fat and to strengthen the immune system. The results, which are published in the journal Cell Metabolism, can ultimately give rise to new obesity and diabetes drugs.