Portrait of Professor Maria Eriksdotter

Maria Eriksdotter gained her degree in medicine from Karolinska Institutet in 1989, having gained her PhD here the year before.

She did research at Karolinska Institutet 1984-1989 before a period of clinical work in internal medicine and geriatrics that lasted until 2003. In 1996 she became a specialist in geriatrics, and then in internal medicine in 1997. In 2000 she took up a post as associate professor of clinical neuroscience at KI.

Between 1999 and 2003 she was director of the memory outpatients clinic within the geriatric clinic at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge, and since 2003 she has been in charge of training in geriatric medicine at KI. From 2003 to 2010 she worked as a senior lecturer at KI, which she combined with working as a consultant at the geriatric clinic.

Since 2005 she has been deputy director of the national research network Swedish Brain Power, and since 2010 a scientific consultant on geriatric medicine for the National Board of Health and Welfare. She has responsibility for the SveDem quality register, which is intended to improve the diagnosis, care and treatment of patients with dementia.

Maria Eriksdotter was appointed professor of geriatrics at Karolinska Institutet in 2010.

Research area

The number of people in the world with dementia is increasing at a pace with increased average life expectancy. In Sweden there are currently around 100,000 people with Alzheimer's disease; globally, there are 36 million suffering from some form of dementia.

There is still no treatment for Alzheimer's, only drugs that can alleviate the symptoms. It is therefore urgent that we develop new drugs that can inhibit the progress of the disease.

Maria Eriksdotter looks for new ways of treating the disease and markers that can distinguish Alzheimer's from normal aging.

More information

To the Division of Clinical Geriatrics