Linnéa Corell

I am a medical doctor and PhD student at the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Karolinska Institutet.

My research focus is on cardiorespiratory and metabolic physiology in individuals with cerebral palsy (CP). I am interested in understanding why individuals with CP have a higher risk of cardiovascular and metabolic disease, and how physical exercise can be used both to better understand this risk and to address it.

A major focus of my research is exercise testing and cardiopulmonary function. Because most standard exercise tests are not adapted to individuals with CP, we have developed and validated field- and laboratory-based methods, including a six-minute test performed on a running frame, to reliably assess aerobic capacity in this population. Building on this work, we have characterized how the ventilatory response to exercise differs in CP, providing further insight into the respiratory factors that may limit endurance capacity.

I also study the cardiometabolic and molecular consequences of CP. We have investigated how heart structure, skeletal muscle mass, circulating immune cells, and plasma proteins and metabolites differ between adults with CP and typically developing individuals, both at rest and in response to a single bout of exercise. Ultimately, the goal is to use these insights to inform more targeted and individualized exercise and rehabilitation strategies to improve cardiometabolic health across the lifespan in individuals with CP.