Rickard Ljung

Rickard Ljung is Adjunct professor of Pharmacoepidemiology at the Institute of Environmental Medicine, as of 1 June 2024. He is also Professor and Head of Pharmacoepidemiology and Analysis at the Swedish Medical Products Agency.

The use of medicinal drugs is very common nowadays, and every year, roughly three quarters of the Swedish population has at least one filled prescription. For all approved drugs, the benefits are assessed to outweigh the risks – but the risk of rare adverse drug reactions is difficult to study in clinical trials since the patient base is often too small. Rickard Ljung and his group link national population registers with information on drug use, diagnoses and socioeconomic factors in order to study the risk of severe adverse reactions. According to Ljung, the safety of drugs must be continually monitored, especially new products such as the COVID-19 vaccines. One outcome of his research is an amendment to the recommendations on who is to be vaccinated with which COVID-19 vaccine with respect to the risk of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle).