Lina Forsman

Senior Consultant in Infectious Diseases and Internal Medicine at Karolinska University Hospital.

Associate Professor at Department of Medicine Solna, Karolinska Institutet, team-leader and adjunct lecturer. 

Responsible for the Infectious Diseases course at the Medical Programme at Karolinska Institutet.

Chair and founder of the Scandinavian NTM Expert group, member of the national TB guidelines in Sweden and the MDR-TB Expert group as well as co-chair of the National work group of TB (NAG-tbc) within the Standardized Pathway.

“Now I understand why I’m ill – I can see the smoke in my lungs”!

In KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, a 65-year-old woman studied the x-ray where I had pointed out TB-related infiltrates, trying to understand her disease despite never having heard of bacteria. This experience made me realize the importance of patient-centered care and has guided my research to be more holistic. My year working as a medical officer in a high-TB endemic settings in rural South Africa led to a specialization in infectious disease and internal medicine. My passion for TB inspires my research, which is guided by clinical questions.

My research has focused on difficulty to treat mycobacterial infections, including TB and non-tuberculous mycobacteria.

My team mainly focuses on improving TB care from a multitude of perspectives, including optimal screening and diagnosis of TB, to treatment optimization and understanding patient’s barriers, in the intersection of TB with global health challenges. We conduct clinical trials, microbiological, diagnostic accuracy studies, quantitative and qualitative and pharmacokinetic research to improve understanding of how drugs behave in the body and how this affects treatment outcomes.

Since my appointment as an adjunct lecturer at KI with course responsibilities, I am also interested in learning strategies and evaluating different pedagogical tools, such as team-based learning. This has led to ongoing research in Medical Pedagogy.

My interest for social determinants for tuberculosis and Global Public Health has led to several international collaborations, including the University

of Sydney, Australia, Partners in Health Lesotho as well as Friends for International TB Relief, Vietnam.

Areas of interest:

Tuberculosis, multidrug-resistant tuberculosis, tuberculosis infection

Non-tuberculous mycobacterium

Epidemiology

Global Public Health

Clinical trials

Pharmacokinetics/pharmacodynamics

Mycobacterial microbiology

Qualitative evaluation

Pedagogical methods

Adjunct lecturer responsible for the Infectious Disease Course in the Medical Programme, Karolinska Institutet.

 
Main organiser of the national course "Tuberculosis" for residents in Infectious Diseases

Co-organiser of the Europe and Advanced Clinical Course of Tuberculosis (EACCTB) 

Ongoing research in Medical Pedagogy

Supervision to doctoral degree

• Mira Akber, “Tuberculosis infection: Immunopathogenesis and new therapeutic strategies”, 2024-