Portrait of Professor Johan Fastbom

Johan Fastbom gained his degree in medicine at Karolinska Institutet 1984, where in 1988 he also gained his PhD in pharmacology with the thesis "Adenosine receptors in the central nervous system, autoradiographic and functional studies." During the period 1990-1994 he worked as a physician and then a consultant at the department of clinical pharmacology at Karolinska Hospital.

Between 1992 and 1993 he was a house officer in internal medicine at Karlskoga hospital. In 1994 he became a specialist in clinical pharmacology at Karolinska University Hospital in Solna, and in 1998 an associate professor of geriatric pharmacology at Karolinska Institutet. From 1994 to 2002 he was employed as a senior research fellow at the then Neurotec department, and from 2002 to 2011 as a senior lecturer at the Karolinska Institutet's Aging Research Center (ARC), a position which still occupies most of his working hours.

Since 2000 he has also had a 40 per cent project employee position at the National Board of Health and Welfare investigating pharmaceutical questions, and since 2002 he has been a consultant at the geriatric clinic at Karolinska University Hospital in Huddinge.

Johan Fastbom was appointed professor of geriatric pharmacology at Karolinska Institutet in 2011.

Research area

The use of medication amongst older people is complicated in many ways, with particular regard to the group with multiple illnesses. This is due to the fact that ageing causes physical changes that lead to increased sensitivity for many medications and consequently the risk for medication side effects and because the use of medication is extensive.

A large problem is that care of the elderly is now often divided and there are no good conditions for the organisation of medication prescriptions for the elderly. Johan Fastbom's research aims to improve the quality in the use of medication amongst the elderly.