Research at the Unit of Lung and Allergy research at Karolinksa Intitutet, Stockholm, Sweden

Abstract

In 2002, the Unit of Lung and Allergy Research moved from the National Institute for Working Life, which was a government research institute separate from the university, to the National Institute of Environmental Medicine at the Karolinska Institutet, which is the medical university of Stockholm, Sweden. The Unit of Lung and Allergy Research group was established at the beginning of the 1980s under the guidance of Professor Per Malmberg and the main interest at that time was within respiratory physiology. At the beginning of the 1990s, the focus changed and became more concentrated on airway inflammatory mechanisms in respiratory diseases, especially as a consequence of exposure to organic material. It was soon established that exposure in pig barns constitutes a very powerful pro-inflammatory stimulus [1, 2], which enabled us to use exposure to organic dust from pig barns as a model for induction of inflammatory reactions. During the past 15 yrs, ∼60 original publications based on in vivo and in vitro experiments of the pro-inflammatory effects of exposure to organic dust and gases from swine confinement buildings have been published. Six PhD students have defended their theses based on the model and two PhD students are presently working with different aspects of it. After having demonstrated that working for some hours in a pig house causes an intense airway inflammatory reaction and an increase of bronchial responsiveness to methacholine of three to four …