News archive

For the second year in a row the Swedish Society of Medicine (Svenska Läkarsällskapet) together with its associations and main partner Karolinska Institutet arranged the State of the Art Covid-19 conference. One of the keynote lectures discussed the future global pandemic preparedness and suggestions from two international independent expert panels presented by Sweden's and Norway's Ambassadors for Global Health.

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet have charted the number of healthcare workers in Stockholm who were on duty during the first wave of the pandemic despite being infected with SARS-CoV-2, having been asymptomatic at the time. The results of the study, which is published in the journal PLOS ONE, present very low figures but the researchers believe that this could still have affected the spread of infection.

Last week the Department of Global Public Health in cooperation with War Child Sweden and the Swedish Red Cross University College hosted a guest lecture with Professor Mark Jordans. In his presentation, Professor Jordans presented interventions and evidence on how to promote the mental health and well-being of children in settings made fragile by armed conflicts.

A receptor activated by substances formed from omega-3 fatty acids plays a vital role in preventing inflammation in blood vessels and reducing atherosclerosis, a new study from Karolinska Institutet published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation reports. The discovery can pave the way for new strategies for treating and preventing cardiovascular disease using omega-3 fatty acids.

Use of assisted reproductive techniques (ART) does not lead to poorer mental health in children across adolescence and young adulthood, according to a large observational study led by researchers at Karolinska Institutet. The study, published in JAMA Psychiatry, found a slightly higher risk of obsessive-compulsive disorder for those born after ART but this was explained by parental background factors.

Kelly Elimian is a postdoctoral researcher at Karolinska Institutet in the research team Global Child Health and Sustainable Development Goals, Department of Global Public Health. His research focuses on strengthening cholera interventions in the north-eastern part of Nigeria and making sure available interventions are properly implemented across cholera endemic countries, of which Nigeria is one.

Karin Wallander at the research group Clinical Genetics, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend her thesis "Hereditary predisposition and prognostic prediction in cancer" on December 17, 2021. Main Supervisor is Emma Tham.

Critical illness and intensive care can affect patients and their families long after discharge from hospital. In her doctoral thesis at Karolinska Institutet, intensive care nurse Gisela Vogel has studied different strategies used to manage critical illness and care in an intensive care unit, from when the patient becomes critically ill until the return to everyday life.

Media coverage of positive vaccine research can have a positive effect on overall social media sentiment – countering vaccine misinformation – but the effects wane over time. Researchers at Oxford University and Karolinska Institutet have analysed social media to investigate associations between vaccine-related major news announcements, and attitudes towards vaccines.

Hi, Riccardo Lo Martire, PhD student at the Division of Physiotherapy, NVS. On January 14 you will defend your thesis ”Sickness absence among patients with chronic pain in Swedish specialist healthcare”, what's the main focus of the thesis?

Riccardo Cristiani at the research group Sports Medicine, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend his thesis "Anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction : subjective knee function, graft failure and revision surgery" on December 17, 2021. Main Supervisor is Anders Stålman.

Instead of searching for proteins that the immune system reacts against in a specific autoimmune disease, researchers have taken the opposite approach to find diseases linked to a certain protein. By searching among patients with various skin diseases, they identified a disease linked to autoimmunity against the skin protein TGM1. The strategy, which is presented in the journal PNAS, can facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of autoimmune diseases.

Anna Kågesten and Karin Båge, Assistant Professor and PhD-student respectively, at the Department of Global Public Health, have co-authored a newly published report for the Expert Group on Aid Studies. The report aims to improve the understanding of norms and values that undermine vs. support sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR), and to identify gaps and possibilities for Swedish development cooperation to find ways to relate to these norms and values.

Karin Liljelund was diagnosed with lung cancer. She is now being treated with targeted drugs against the very mutation that causes her cancer, an example of precision medicine.

Can artificial intelligence (AI) overcome the challenges of precision medicine? We asked Magnus Boman, professor at KTH and affiliated to KI, whose research includes looking at how AI can be used in healthcare.

Helena Bergsten, Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM) at the Department of Medicine Huddinge, is defending her thesis "Streptococcal and Staphylococcal Tissue Infections: Therapeutic Challenges and Opportunities" on December 17th 2021. Main Supervisor is Professor Anna Norrby-Teglund.

During seven weeks in the summer, undergraduate students at Karolinska Institutet can enrol in Karolinska Institutet’s Summer School in Medical Research which is a research-preparatory school. Previous participant Victor Tollemar and supervisor Rachael Sugars both agree that it is an excellent opportunity to receive insight and get to experience a researcher’s world for a short period.

KI's education is in constant development. The international program offering is now expanding, and two additional master’s programmes have been added to the catalogue. It is The Master's Programme in Translational Physiology and Pharmacology and The Master's Program in Nutrition Science that will start during the autumn of 2022.

A large study by an international team of researchers including from Karolinska Institutet has demonstrated that the frequency of defecation is a heritable trait in humans, and that specific genetic profiles influence bowel habits and predisposition to irritable bowel syndrome. The findings are published in the journal Cell Genomics.

79 KI researchers have received a total of SEK 254,450,000 in grants from the Swedish Cancer Society. In addition, four Fellowship prevention grants were also awarded to researchers at KI. In total, the Swedish Cancer Society distributed SEK 850 million, which is the largest amount ever.

This year's silver medals are awarded to professors Maria Masucci, Christina Opava, Åke Rökaeus and Jan Ygge. The medal is awarded to people who have made particularly excellent efforts to support Karolinska Institutet's operations and is celebrated in connection with the ceremony "Nit och Redlighet".

We are approaching Holidays ans the closing of the books and would like to remind you of some important information regarding finances and HR.

Never before have so many people been displaced by war and poverty. Such change and loss can leave deep psychological scars. A new thesis by Doctor Maria Sundvall at Karolinska Institutet is based on surveys and interviews with asylum seekers and refugees in Sweden about their encounters with the psychiatric and primary care services. The results of her studies can make a significant contribution to the dialogue between migrants, clinics and authorities.

What is precision psychiatry? KI researcher Kristiina Tammimies gives an example. She is a research leader at the KIND competence centre, the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, and studies the role of genetics in neuropsychiatric disorders.

Not just care, but not just research either. No, precision medicine requires healthcare and research to find new ways of interacting. Meet the experts working at the cutting edge of healthcare. Read the first article in an in-depth series about precision medicine from KI's Swedish popular science magazine.

Hi Anja Gebhardt, PhD student at the Division of Nursing. On December 15 you will defend your thesis ”Beyond exhaustion and pain: the intertwinement of health and suffering among women and mothers”. What is the main focus of the thesis?

Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, University of Oslo and Oslo University Hospital have developed a new kind of immunotherapy for leukemia. The results of a study published in Nature Biotechnology show that the therapy kills cancer cells from patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. The researchers now want to conduct a clinical study and also test the method on other types of cancer.

By building up expertise around how pain arises, he hopes to help find a future solution to chronic pain. Professor Patrik Ernfors writes about failures, his work with the Nobel Prizes and why you need to be open-minded to make new discoveries.

Endothelial cell dysfunction is a well-established response to cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as smoking and obesity. A new study from Karolinska Institutet show that an individual’s cardiovascular disease risk was linked to the levels of endothelial proteins found in the blood. The study was recently published in Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology, ATVB Journal.

While investigating the unusual G quadruplex DNA structure (G4), the Simon Elsässer group has developed a more accurate method for mapping these structures in the genome. G4 CUT&Tag revealed numerous G4s in the human and mouse genome that were previously not detected. The study has been published in Nucleic Acid Research. These findings may be used for drug development for cancer therapy and provide an important tool to evaluate drug action and safety.

Kidney function plays an important role in drug safety and effectiveness. As many medications are excreted by the kidneys, patients with reduced kidney function are at a higher risk of toxic drug levels. Chronic kidney disease (CKD) has been recognized as a leading public health problem worldwide with a global estimated prevalence over 9%.

Having an elevated resting heart rate in old age may be an independent risk factor of dementia, according to a study at Karolinska Institutet published in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. Since resting heart rate is easy to measure and can be lowered through exercise or medical treatment, the researchers believe that it may help to identify people with higher dementia risk for early intervention.

At the french ambassy, in attendance of colleagues, family and friends senior advisor Marie Chenik was bestowed upon the insignia of Chevalier of the National Order of Merit.

Analysing molecular characteristics and their variation during lifestyle changes, by combining digital tools, classical laboratory tests and new biomolecular measurements, could enable individualised prevention of disease. This is according to a new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden and the University of Helsinki in Finland published in the journal Cell Systems. The researchers show what a proactive healthcare model could comprise and how it could help in maintaining good health.

Four of the 27 new Wallenberg Academy Fellows appointed in 2021 will conduct their research at Karolinska Institutet (KI). The five-year grant is financed by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg (KAW) Foundation to provide young and talented PIs with long-term research funding in Sweden. This year, two researchers at KI are also awarded an extended grant within the funding programme.

The risk of developing cardiovascular disease is strongly associated with the “bad” LDL cholesterol. A large study by scientists at Karolinska Institutet now shows that two proteins that transport cholesterol particles in the blood provide early and reliable risk information. The researchers advocate introducing new guidelines for detecting cardiac risk and say the results, published in PLOS Medicine, may pave the way for early treatment, which could help lower morbidity and fatality rates.

In January, Karolinska Institutet will become a member of the international news platform The Conversation. This will provide another platform for our researchers to bring their knowledge to the general public. The initiative is part of the Communications and Public Relations Office’s commitment to Strategy 2030 and includes helping researchers to write popular science articles in English. 

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.

Richelle Duque Björvang, doctoral student at the division for obstetrics and gynecology, has won the European competition "HERStory" which aims to inspire the next generation of young researchers to think big and dare to try different career paths

Amit Kumar and Agneta Nordberg, at the Division of Clinical Geriatrics (Nordberg Translational Molecular Imaging Lab), are awarded a grant of USD 175,000 USD over a four-year period for the project ”Understanding the role of synaptic loss in degenerative proteinopathies”.

Weakening muscles are a natural part of the ageing process, but for some people with a condition called sarcopenia the decline is abnormally fast. A new study from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden suggests that the early stages of sarcopenia could be counteracted with timely interventions designed to preserve physical and cognitive function and manage chronic conditions. The results are published in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle.

In a recent study published in the scientific journal EMBO Reports, the Nils-Göran Larsson group has identified responses to acute and chronic impairment of mitochondrial gene expression. These findings can be valuable for future mitochondria-targeted therapy for cancer and other mitochondrial-related disorders. We have talked to postdoctoral researcher and the study’s first author Mara Mennuni about their findings.

KI researcher Amaia Calderón-Larrañaga, Assistant Professor at the Aging Research Center (ARC), has been awarded a project grant for research within primary care from the Swedish Research Council.

Professor Carol Tishelman at the Department of learning, informatics, management and ethics and her research group have been awarded the KI Culture Award 2021 for the research project DöBra.

Last month was the half time seminar of Hang Tran Thi Thanh with the title: Clinical and experimental implementation of standardised hypothermic treatment for neonatal asphyxia in low-income settings.

Naseer Baloch at the research group Colorectal Surgery, Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery, will defend his thesis "Perineal healing following abdominoperineal excision for rectal and anal cancer" on December 3, 2021. Main Supervisor is Per Nilsson.

On November 24, H.M. Queen Letizia of Spain, H.M. Queen Silvia and H.R.H. Crown Princess Victoria Karolinska Institutet and Karolinska University Hospital.

On 18 November 2021, the Faculty Board at Karolinska Institutet decided on the allocation of the funding for eight positions as Assistant Professor, eight positions as Senior researcher and eight Consolidator grants for researchers already employed by KI.

Hi Elisabeth Carlsson Farrelly, PhD student at the Division of Clinical Geriatrics, NVS. On December 16 you will defend your thesis ”The Stockholm Spinal Cord Uro Study”, what's the main focus of the thesis?

On 18 November 2021, the Faculty Board decided on the allocation of the funding for eight positions as Assistant Professor, eight positions as Senior researcher and eight Consolidator grants for researchers already employed by KI.