Helga Westerlind

Helga Westerlind

Senior Research Specialist | Docent
Telephone: +46852483354
Visiting address: Maria Aspmans gata 30A, 17164 Solna
Postal address: K2 Medicin, Solna, K2 KEP Askling, 171 77 Stockholm
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About me

  • Docent in Epidemiology

    PhD, Karolinska Institutet, 2014

    MSc in Computer Science and Engineering from Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), 2009

    PhD supervision, ongoing
    Anton Öberg Sysojev (main supervisor)
    Younes Laalou (main supervisor)
    Liselotte Tidblad (co-supervisor)
    Anna-Maria Wintler (co-supervisor)
    Linnea Sjöblom (co-supervisor)

    PostDoc supervision
    Maxime Raffray, 2024-

    Students that have defended a PhD
    Weng Ian Che, 2024, co-supervisor
    Joakim Lindqvist, 2022, co-supervisor

    Students with a licentiate degree
    Daniel Berglund, 2019, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), co-supervisor

Research

  • My research focuses on finding risk factors for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and progression of the disease.

    This is done by data mining of different data sources such as questionnaire data, genetic data, quality registers and nation wide population registers. I use "traditional" epidemiological methods, as well as machine learning and more computationally intense methods.

Teaching

  • I teach a variety of topics such as mathematical statistics, biostatistics, genetic epidemiology, epidemiology.

    Current teaching engagement include lectures in Genetic Epidemiology at the Clinical Research School and Precision Medicine at Frontiers in Translational Medicine.

Articles

All other publications

Grants

  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2024 - 31 December 2026
    Purpose and aims: To enable prevention of RA, both by providing information for public health based prevention and for precision prevention directed towards individuals at high risk for RA, and to improve outcomes for people who develop RA despite efforts towards prevention.More specific aims are to:better understand the role of environmental, genetic and immune determinants behind development of RAdevelop better diagnostic and surveillance tools to enable identification of individuals at high risk for RA (pre-RA)obtain new understanding of determinants and mechanisms for the protection against arthritis that is observed in some pre-RA individualsdevelop and evaluate digital tools that can provide patients and health care with information and capacity to test and implement precision prevention and early precision-based therapies for RA.Work planUse our large case-control and cohort studies to describe combinations of environment/life styles and genes that predict development vs protection of RAUse insights from (1) to determine which biomarkers that predict onset vs protection of RAUse novel digital tools to extend prospective cohorts of individuals at risk for RA, where prediction tools can be validated and mechanisms behind protection investigatedDevelop systems where precision prevention strategies can be tested and implemented.The long term clinical significance should be a shift in the care of RA from the present care of established disease to personalized prevention.
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2023 - 31 December 2025
    Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease in which granulomas form in any part of the body, most often affecting the lungs and lymph nodes. The disease varies among patients in terms of onset, severity and prognosis. A major obstacle in identifying causes of sarcoidosis is the inability to distinguish between different groups of patients. Inflammatory biomarker levels in combination with genetics can be used to better characterize and treat patients.My goal is to identify subgroups of sarcoidosis patients using genetic and proteomic data and determine whether these are associated with sarcoidosis prognosis. I will achieve this goal by collecting proteogenomic data from several sources of cases and controls. First, I will examine the relationship between genetics and inflammatory proteins in sarcoidosis patients. Then I will investigate whether there are clusters of patients with similar characteristics (endotypes) using a data-driven approach. To determine whether these subgroups are clinically meaningful, we will examine whether the risk of poor prognosis is different between the endotypes.The proposed project will be the first of its kind and will reveal important mechanisms of sarcoidosis pathogenesis. The use of genetics and proteomics from pre-clinical and newly diagnosed patients will be used to set the foundation for developing non-invasive biomarkers for diagnosis and endotype-specific treatment of sarcoidosis.
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2021 - 31 December 2023

Employments

  • Senior Research Specialist, Department of Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, 2022-

Degrees and Education

  • Docent, Karolinska Institutet, 2022
  • Degree Of Doctor Of Philosophy, Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Karolinska Institutet, 2014

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