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The government has appointed Jan Albert, professor of infectious disease control at Karolinska Institutet and senior consultant at Karolinska University Hospital, to lead a government inquiry looking into strengthening the country’s preparedness for future pandemics. The directive concerns a national strategy for how pandemics are to be managed and a possible revision of the Communicable Diseases Act. The investigation should be delivered in February 2025.

Vaccination protects against severe COVID-19 but not against infection. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital now show that protection against infection with the new omicron variants is linked to mucosal IgA antibodies, which are not induced by vaccination. These are the findings of two studies recently published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, and The Lancet Microbe, and could explain the limited protection by currently available vaccines against infection.

A new DNA-based COVID-19 vaccine is now being tested for the first time on healthy volunteers at Karolinska University Hospital. The vaccine has been developed at Karolinska Institutet and target multiple parts of the virus, making it less vulnerable to mutated strains and potentially effective against new variants.

Biobank Sweden has teamed up with the Swedish regions and the National Pandemic Centre (NPC) at Karolinska Institutet to produce a new process that gives researchers access to 1.5 million COVID-19 samples. The samples are stored at the NPC and researchers applying to use them must first seek ethical approval.

The group of expert coordinators at the Centre for Health Crises keeps growing. The expert coordinators manage the work that is done within their field of expertise. The latest area of expertise to be added to the Centre is laboratory and diagnostic preparedness, with Jessica Alm as expert coordinator.

Helena Hervius Askling is new in the growing group of expert coordinators at the Centre for Health Crises. Her extensive experience in the field of infectious diseases and the topic of vaccine, as a medical doctor in infectious diseases, county medical officer and associate professor, will strengthen the centre’s competence in the field.

During the pandemic, it became clear that children who contracted COVID-19 became less ill than adults. One hypothesis has been that common colds would give children immunity protecting against a severe form of the disease. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet are now able to show that OC43, one of the coronaviruses that cause common colds, boosts the immune response to COVID-19. The study, which is published in PNAS, could give rise to more tailored vaccine programmes for children and adults.

Following a request from KI's President, the Centre for Health Crises has produced the report Improved preparedness for the next health crises – lessons learned at KI during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report outlines the changes that were made and the lessons learned from the work KI did during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is now available to read online in its entirety.

High levels of mucosal IgA antibodies in the airways protect against SARS-CoV-2 infection for at least eight months. Omicron infection generates durable mucosal antibodies, reducing the risk of re-infection. These are the findings of a study published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital in Sweden. The results raise further hope for the feasibility of future nasal vaccine platforms to protect against infection.

Critical illness myopathy (CIM) is a common complication affecting ventilator-treated intensive care patients, which can lead to increased mortality/morbidity, prolonged hospital care, impaired patient quality of life, and increased healthcare costs. reported molecular pathogenesis of CIM during prolonged ICU stay, and potential diagnostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets. The study was recently published in Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle.

In its recent call, the Swedish Research Council has awarded in excess of SEK 19 million for six projects at KI. The project receiving the largest grant aims to study the long-term impact of the pandemic on the lifestyle and health of young adults.

Losing too much weight when infected with COVID-19 has been linked to worse outcomes. Now, researchers at Karolinska Institutet have discovered that SARS-CoV-2 infection fuels blood vessel formation in fat tissues, thus revving up the body’s thermogenic metabolism. Blocking this process by using an existing drug curbed weight loss in mice and hamsters that were infected with the virus, according to the study published in the journal Nature Metabolism.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have shown that patients with acute COVID-19 infection have increased levels of the cytokine IL-26 in their blood. Moreover, high IL-26 levels correlate with an exaggerated inflammatory response that signifies severe cases of the disease. The findings, which are presented in Frontiers in Immunology, indicate that IL-26 is a potential biomarker for severe COVID-19.  

This hybrid symposium is organized to increase our understanding in physical and rehabilitation medicine for clinicians and other health care workers who meet patients with persistent symptoms after SARS-CoV-2 infection; the so-called post COVID-19 condition.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have in a new study used cellular reprogramming to create human three-dimensional brain models and infected these models with SARS-CoV-2. In infected models, the brain immune cells excessively eliminated synapses and acquired a gene expression pattern mimicking what has been observed in neurodegenerative disorders. The findings could help to identify new treatments against persistent cognitive symptoms after a Covid-19 infection.

A study at Karolinska Institutet shows that the coronavirus variant BA.2.75.2, an Omicron sublineage, largely evades neutralizing antibodies in the blood and is resistant to several monoclonal antibody antiviral treatments. The findings, published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, suggest a risk of increased SARS-CoV-2 infections this winter, unless the new updated bivalent vaccines help to boost immunity in the population.

Many people were delighted to hear that Professor Svante Pääbo has been awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, particularly so Hugo Zeberg, researcher at Karolinska Institutet. He has collaborated with Svante Pääbo for years, not least on the work to find Neanderthal genes that can influence how ill different people become after contracting the COVID-19 virus.

Intravenous treatment with omega-3 fatty acids in elderly hospitalised patients in intensive care due to COVID-19 seems to have positive effects on the ability of the immune system to cope with the virus, according to a study from Karolinska Institutet. In the future, the study, published in the journal Clinical and Translational Medicine, could lead to a complementary, cost-effective treatment for COVID-19.

Have a car. Don’t be poor. Don’t have a stressful job. Age, gender and socioeconomics are some of the factors that affect your risk of developing an illness and of dying prematurely. Sweden has set the goal of levelling out influenceable health gaps within one generation. But is this goal realistic? And why is it so difficult to achieve? Read an article series about health inequities from the Swedish magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap.

Children with certain immunodeficiency diseases carry mutations in genes that regulate the body’s immune system against viral infections and they have a higher mortality rate due to COVID-19. This is according to a study by researchers from Karolinska Institutet, published in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology.

High levels of mucosal antibodies in the airways reduce the risk of being infected by omicron, but many do not receive detectable antibodies in the airways despite three doses of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine. These are the findings of a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine, led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital.

Sweden initially chose a different disease prevention and control path during the pandemic than many other European countries. In June 2020, the Swedish Government established a national Commission to examine the management of COVID-19 in Sweden. In a review, Professor Jonas F Ludvigsson summarizes and comments on the findings of the commission inquiry. The review is published in Acta Paediatrica.

In a recent study researchers from Karolinska Institutet, among others, have characterised the new omicron variant BA.2.75, comparing its ability to evade antibodies against current and previous variants. The study, published in the journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases, suggests that BA.2.75 is not more resistant to antibodies than the currently dominating BA.5, which is positive news.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet are developing a coronavirus vaccine designed to be less sensitive to mutations and equipped for future strains. The vaccine showed promising results in mice in a newly published study in EMBO Molecular Medicine, and the researchers now hope to be able to take it to safety studies on humans.

In a new analysis, Karolinska Institutet is ranked number eight in a list of organizations with the most published articles on COVID-19 and the immune response. KI also stands out as one of the universities that has had the most international collaborations in the field. The analysis was conducted by Chinese researchers without a connection to KI and is published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet present the results of a refined clinical COVID-19 test, which has been used to track the spread of the Omicron variant in real time in the Swedish population. The study, published in the journal Med, provides new insights into the dominance transition of Omicron sublineages that occurred consistently across the world.

The clinical outcome and severity of COVID-19 cannot be explained by a single factor like age, gender, or comorbidities. A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden has identified potential determinants of COVID-19 severity at the cellular level using advanced systems biology analysis. The findings, published in the journal Cell Systems, offer insights into the metabolic tug-of-war in the human body and its association with disease severity.

Severe acute COVID-19 is very rare in children, but SARS-CoV-2 infection can trigger a novel post infectious condition called Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C). MIS-C is a potentially serious condition, and so far, little has been known on risk factors for developing MIS-C.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Danderyd Hospital have followed participants who have received three doses of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine and compared their immune responses after Omicron infection. The results, which are published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, show that Omicron infection elicits significantly higher antibody responses in individuals without prior COVID-19 infection as compared to previously infected individuals.

Researchers at Uppsala University and Karolinska Institutet are one step closer to explaining why COVID-19 patients have a substantially increased risk of blood clots. The study, published in Nature Immunology, shows that a gene variant in the innate immune system influences the risk for blood clots in the lungs of severely ill COVID-19 patients.

Vaccines based on inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus are commonly used in resource-poor countries due to their low cost. New research from Karolinska Institutet shows that a booster shot of mRNA vaccine to individuals who have received two doses of inactivated vaccine offers the same level of protection against COVID-19 as three doses of mRNA vaccine. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

A team of scientists including at Karolinska Institutet has used mini-kidneys simulating those of diabetic patients to further our understanding of the link between diabetes and COVID-19. The researchers found that diabetic mini-kidneys have a higher susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection than non-diabetic mini-kidneys. The study, which is published in the journal Cell Metabolism, also identified genetic evidence for the essential role of the ACE2 receptor in COVID-19.

The pandemic still effects people around the world, but as restrictions are lifted, there are new challenges. At Karolinska Institutet, teachers are faced with hybrid teaching, researchers will return to previous research and students will find their way back to routines on campus. Here, they talk about the time before and during the pandemic and after restrictions were lifted.

Residential exposure to ambient air pollutants is linked to an elevated risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection, an observational study of young adults in Stockholm, Sweden shows. The study was conducted by researchers from Karolinska Institutet and is published in JAMA Network Open.

A recent study published in Indoor Air by Antonio Rothfuchs et al, is the first to demonstrate active SARS-CoV-2 in air. Infectious SARS-CoV-2 was recovered from the air in rooms occupied by COVID-19 patients. This result strongly supports the aerosol route of transmission for SARS-CoV-2 and urges the revision of infection control frameworks for COVID-19 to include airborne transmission.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have developed a novel strategy for identifying potent miniature antibodies, so-called nanobodies, against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants. The approach led to the discovery of multiple nanobodies that in cell cultures and mice effectively blocked infection with different SARS-CoV-2 variants. The findings, which are described in the journals Nature Communications and Science Advances, could pave the way for new treatments against COVID-19.

Vaccination against COVID-19 during pregnancy is not associated with a higher risk of pregnancy complications, according to a large-scale registry study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health published in the journal JAMA.

Late last year, preliminary studies revealed that the fast-spreading Omicron SARS-CoV-2 variant was likely to evade COVID-19 antibodies but, in many people, less so than expected. Now one of those studies from Karolinska Institutet has been published in the prestigious journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases. KI researcher Ben Murrell explains the findings and recalls the rush to understand the new variant.

People who were bedridden for at least a week due to COVID-19 were more likely to experience anxiety and depression for up to 16 months after the infection, compared with those who only had mild symptoms or were never infected. That is according to a large study based on data from six countries and conducted by an international team of researchers including those from Karolinska Institutet and the University of Iceland. The findings are published in The Lancet Public Health.

There is a lack of understanding as to why some people suffer from long-lasting symptoms after COVID-19 infection. A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, the Helmholtz Center Munich (HMGU) and the Technical University of Munich (TUM), both in Germany, now demonstrates that a certain type of immune cell called macrophages show altered inflammatory and metabolic expression several months after mild COVID-19. The findings are published in the journal Mucosal Immunology.

Tyler Sandberg, Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM) at the Department of Medicine, Huddinge is defending his thesis "B cell responses to human flavivirus vaccination and SARS-CoV-2 infection" on March 18, 2022. Main Supervisor is Professor Hans-Gustaf Ljunggren.

Johan von Schreeb, professor of global disaster medicine and director of the Centre for Research on Health Care in Disasters at Karolinska Institutet, has been named director of KI’s newly established Centre for Health Crises. The aim is to create a center based on KI’s knowledge and capability, that finds connections between groups and people, with the aim of increasing preparedness for a new pandemic or health crisis.

The EU-funded research network Vaccelerate has now opened a European volunteer-registry of study participants for research on COVID-19 vaccines. The aim of this initiative is to boost the capacity for clinical studies on COVID-19 vaccines in the EU, but also to support vaccine research in future pandemics.

The major genetic risk variant for severe COVID-19, one we inherited from Neandertals, is associated with a 27 percent lower risk of HIV infection. This is according to a new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany published in the journal PNAS.

Little has been known to date about how the immune system’s natural killer (NK) cells detect which cells have been infected with SARS-CoV-2. An international team of scientist led by researchers from Karolinska Institutet now shows that NK cells respond to a certain peptide on the surface of infected cells. The study, which is published in Cell Reports, is an important piece of the puzzle in our understanding of how the immune system reacts to COVID-19.

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.

Over the course of two half-days students, researchers, & implementers from a range of disciplines gathered online to examine matters of inequity and vulnerability in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Nordic countries. The event was hosted by the Nordic Pandemic Network, an interdisciplinary collaboration on COVID-19 & its impact in the Nordic region, which KI is a part of along with The University of Copenhagen, Roskilde University, University of Stavanger & Hanken School of Economics.

Researchers from LIME have recently published two reports for Region Stockholm in which they investigate the use of telemedicine in primary healthcare during first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The omicron variant can partly evade the antibody response provided by vaccination or infection with previous variants of SARS-CoV-2. However, T cells still recognise omicron, scientists at Karolinska Institutet report in a study published in the journal Nature Medicine.

WHO experts are now recommending using the drug baricitinib to treat severe COVID-19 infection. Researchers at Karolinska Institutet were involved in the early analysis of the drug’s efficacy against the disease: “I myself would’ve benefited from it when I got COVID-19,” says adjunct professor Ali Mirazimi.