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RESEARCH GROUP
Clinical Immunology
Research activities are largely focused on cronic innflamatory and autoimmune diseases.
About 5-7% of the population has an autoimmune disease and we aim to find causes and disease mechanisms of such diseases.
Autoimmune disease is a condition caused by the body's immune system attacking the body itself. This leads to chronic inflammation and other phenomena. Examples of such diseases are systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), primarily Sjögren's syndrome, arthritis (rheumatoid arthritis), autoimmune thyroiditis (inflammation of the thyroid gland) and psoriasis. It also applies to chronic intestinal diseases such as ulcerative colitis, Morbus Crohn and celiac disease.
The research group has great interdisciplinarity and connects basic biomedicine (molecular medicine and genetics) with several clinical specialties, such as internal medicine, rheumatology, neurology, neuropsychology, gastroenterology, dermatology and radiology.
Since 2005, well characterised research cohorts have been built up, primarily in the diseases SLE and primary Sjøgren's syndrome, as well as cohorts with age- and gender-matched healthy control persons. There is currently an extensive research biobank with blood, spinal fluid (cerebrospinal fluid) and tissue.
For a number of years, the research group has distinguished itself nationally and internationally, and this is the reason why the national NorTrials centre for clinical immunology was located at Stavanger University Hospital in 2022.
As of January 2023, the research group have enabled the graduation of 10 PhD candidates.
The clinical immunological research group is led by Professor Roald Omdal.
Research activity
The research group has several main areas for the research. The group participates in several major international projects, in addition to its own studies.
Main focus
Cognitive impairment includes disturbance of memory, concentration and orientation, and occurs in a large proportion of people who have autoimmune diseases. This is because the immune system attacks brain cells, the brain's support cells (glial cells) or the brain's blood vessels. We are working on how different antibodies affect brain functions, and have shown that anti-NR2 antibodies in particular are an important cause.
Fatigue is an extreme form of tiredness and exhaustion that accompanies many diseases. The main hypothesis is that fatigue is part of sickness behavior, and occurs when the innate immune system is activated. We try to find the biological mechanisms behind this phenomenon that occurs in the brain. This research currently includes fatigue in inflammatory bowel disease (ulcerative colitis, Morbus Crohn and coeliac disease), psoriasis, arthritis, as well as breast cancer and autoimmune thyroiditis. In this work, we investigate genes, various molecules (especially cytokines and heat shock proteins) as well as neuropeptides. Investigations into spinal fluid to find unknown signalling molecules for fatigue is a priority area that has provided a lot of new knowledge about fatigue.
Post-COVID-19 syndrome (also called long-COVID) has received increasing attention because it affects relatively many people, appears to be long-lasting, and causes reduced quality of life and ability to work. The prognosis and treatment are currently unknown.
Our hypothesis is that post-COVID-19 syndrome represents so-called post-viral fatigue, a sequelae that occurs in a small minority after previous viral infections (EBV, CMV, and other vira). Post-viral fatigue will usually normalise over time, but may in some cases persist over years.
One possible explanation for persistence of fatigue without obvious activity of the immune system or persistent infection is disturbances in the epigenetic regulation of genes, e.g. due to existing DNA methylation.
In this project, we include 50 people who have had COVID infection without having experienced late effects and compare with 50 of the same sex and age who have existing post-COVID-19 syndrome. We are looking for differences in biochemical candidate markers for fatigue, proteomics profiles, and DNA methylation patterns.
International research projects
IDEA-FAST is an EU project with cooperation between 30 centres in 12 European countries. The aim of IDEA-FAST is to investigate whether new technology (e.g. heart rate monitor) can provide useful digital measurements that can be used to assess the effect of treatment in other studies.
The study is led locally by senior consultant p.hd. Maria Boge Lauvsnes.
NECESSITY is an EU project organized as a research collaboration between 25 centers in 9 European countries. The goal is to develop new methods for assessing disease activity, as well as find more effective treatment methods.
Stavanger University Hospital has the role of Scandinavian coordinator.
Local project leader at SUS is superior to Ph.D. Katrine B. Norheim.
SGENE is a long-standing collaboration between our research group and research centres in Sweden, the Netherlands, England, Canada, USA and a number of other countries. This work is led from Oklahoma in the USA and has led to a lot of new knowledge about the genetic predisposition for primary Sjögren's syndrome.
SiSS is an international research project led from Newcastle University, where 8 research centres from the UK, France, Sweden and Norway participate. The background for the project is a hypothesis that there are different subgroups of primary Sjögren's syndrome that can be distinguished by different expression of genes.
The local project manager at SUS is a senior consultant p.hd. Svein Joar A. Johnsen.
There is close regional cooperation with the University of Bergen through Broegelmann's research laboratory (Prof. Roland Jonsson and Silke Appel) and the Proteomics Platform (Prof. Frode Berven).
Internationally, we have for many years had projects together with the University of Uppsala (Prof. Lars Rönnblom), Karolinska Institutet (Prof. Marie Wahren-Herlenius and Jon Lampa), University of Gothenburg (Prof. Henrik Zetterberg), Erasmus University of Rotterdam (Prof. Marjan Versnel), University of Newcastle, UK (Prof. Wan-Fai Ng), Kitasato University Tokyo (Prof. Shunsei Hirohata), and in the USA The Feinstein Institute (Prof. Kevin Tracey), The Albert Einstein College of Medicine, NY (Prof. Chaim Putterman), Denver University, Colorado (Prof. Charles Dinarello), and the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Genes and Human Disease Research Program (C.J. Lessard).
Publications
Click on the links below to see profile page and publication list for members of the research group (cristin.no)
