Tove Ekdahl Hjelm

Dr Tove Ekdahl Hjelm is a oncologist working at Stockholm South General Hospital, and a PhD-student at MMK, KI.

The PhD projects are related to early onset breast cancer in Sweden and Ethiopia and to breast surgery in Uganda. The first study was conducted in Uganda, and showed that a very small proportion of the incident cases of breast cancer were operated, demonstrating a significant unmet need for this type of surgery.

In sub-Saharan Africa, a considerable proportion of breast cancer patients are young and surprisingly many breast cancer patients in Ethiopia are men. This raises the suspicion that genetic factors may play an important role in breast cancer development in this part of the world. In addition, patients often present late when cure is not possible. There is a lack of diagnostic services such as immunohistochemistry for breast cancer diagnosis in Ethiopia, hence capacity-building in the Pathology Department is a key component in the Ethiopian projects. 

Studies including patients with early onset breast cancer and breast cancer in men in Sweden and Ethiopia are currently beeing studied. These studies will investigate tumor stage at diagnosis, tumor biology as well as family history of breast cancer and presence of pathogenic variants in genes linked to increased risk of breast cancer. A cohort of the study participants in Ethiopia will be followed to investigate adherence to recommended treatment and reasons for non-adherence.

The projects aim to provide important new knowledge that can be used in the development of strategies for early detection and prevention.

Research group: Vascular Surgery [1]
Global Surgery [2]
[1] https://ki.se/en/mmk/vascular-surgery
[2] https://ki.se/en/mmk/global-surgery