University of Helsinki

Chronic disease vulnerability in Ukraine during armed conflict

Abstract Armed conflicts, like the Russian invasion in Ukraine, devastated healthcare systems and amplified chronic disease burdens. This study aimed to unveil novel links between environmental and social factors and chronic illnesses during crises.This study uniquely combined in...

Metabolic switch: lymphocytes and the onset of T-cell-mediated autoimmunity

T cell-mediated autoimmune diseases, including multiple sclerosis (MS), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and type 1 diabetes (T1D), are being increasingly recognized as disorders driven not only by immune dysregulation but also by profound metabolic reprogramming in lymphocytes. Emergi...

Data-driven risk algorithms from primary care for early dementia detection and prevention trial enrichment

Background: Early identification of individuals at risk of dementia is essential for effective prevention and timely intervention. Existing risk scores rely heavily on age, which limits their discriminative power at clinically relevant thresholds such as 65 years, when preventive...

Mycotoxins in Basidiomycete Mycelium and Fruiting Bodies: Implications for Eu Novel Food Assessment and Selected International Regulatory Frameworks

ABSTRACT Advances in technology have enabled the efficient and sustainable production of basidiomycete vegetative mycelium, particularly from Pleurotus species, as a novel food source. However, mycelium has yet to receive regulatory approval in many global markets, requiring a be...

P1.230. Rare Esophageal Cancers in Finland: A 30-Year Nationwide Registry Study

Abstract Topic Esophageal Cancer: Surgical Treatment of Esophageal Cancer – long term outcomes Background Esophageal cancers other than adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma are rare and not well characterized. Most evidence published are case reports or small institutional...

The clinical and molecular spectrum of AGO2-associated Lessel-Kreienkamp neurodevelopmental syndrome

Abstract Background Pathogenic variants in AGO2 ,encoding a central component of the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC), cause the neurodevelopmental disorder Lessel-Kreienkamp syndrome (LESKRES). The variant spectrum and associated molecular mechanisms underlying phenotypic va...

Relationships between Arctic sea-ice concentration, temperature, and specific humidity in the lower troposphere during 1980–2021

Abstract. Understanding of the local effects of sea-ice concentration (SIC) variations on the Arctic atmosphere is a prerequisite for assessing the role of Arctic sea-ice decline in the climate system, including its influence on mid-latitudes. In this study, we analysed the relat...

Obesity and sarcopenia affect the metabolite profiles of pet dogs

ABSTRACT Overweight and reduced muscle mass significantly affect canine health, yet their metabolic implications in dogs require further investigation. This study aimed to characterize metabolic alterations associated with overweight, obesity, and reduced muscle mass in dogs. An...

Population pharmacokinetics of methylprednisolone in neonates and paediatric patients undergoing cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass

<title>Abstract</title> <bold>Purpose</bold> Methylprednisolone is commonly used during paediatric cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass to attenuate the systemic inflammatory response. However, developmental differences in drug disposition and procedural factors such as ci...

Prevalence of Lumbar MRI Changes Associated with Nerve Root Compression Among Middle-aged People - A Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1966 Study

Study design. A cross-sectional study. Objective. To evaluate the prevalence of lumbar MRI changes associated with nerve root compression in a large, unselected middle-aged population. Summary of Background Data. While degenerative spinal changes are frequently observed in imagin...

Disentangling global supply chains: A systematic map of research on the biodiversity and social impacts of European blue food consumption

Abstract Background : Seafood is a vital global resource, yet the rapid growth of aquaculture – which now supplies over half the world’s blue food – has introduced significant ecological and social challenges. As a major importer and consumer, Europe is central to these global su...

Model 1b analytical performance specifications – report on the Prague 2025 workshop

diagnostic medical devices (IVD MD) meet regulatory and quality standards before market release; for external quality assurance assessments; for quality control, monitoring reagent lot-to-lot variability, and allowing preanalytical variation assessments in labs; and for guiding p...

Bidirectional associations between loneliness and physical multimorbidity and the mediating role of social inactivity

Physical multimorbidity and loneliness are increasingly recognised as public health concerns, but the nature of their potential relationships remains unclear. Here we report bidirectional associations between physical multimorbidity and loneliness in middle-aged and older adults...

CX3CR1 Modulates Migration of Resident Microglia Towards Cortical Laser‐Induced Lesions

Microglia are innate immune cells of the central nervous system (CNS). They extend their processes and migrate toward injuries in vivo. However, how the fractalkine receptor (CX3CR1) influences microglial migration remains unknown. Label-free proteomic profiling predicted changes...

Associations of mental health with subsequent weight development during a 4-year follow-up in adolescence

Abstract Background Although obesity and mental health problems represent two of the most pressing public health challenges, their developmental interplay remains insufficiently understood. Thus, we examined how depressive and anxiety symptoms, self-esteem, and psychological resi...

Decoding the clinical masking effect in SAA-positive Parkinson’s disease: from central mechanistic dichotomy to a peripheral diagnostic panel

Despite global efforts to develop disease-modifying therapies for Parkinson’s disease (PD), recurrent trial failures persist, likely driven by profound and unstratified molecular heterogeneity. The advent of α-syn seed amplification assays (SAA) has enabled biologically pure coho...

Longitudinal associations between sleepiness and sleep disturbances across pregnancy

OBJECTIVE: Although sleep disturbances increase during pregnancy, sleepiness does not appear to follow a similar trajectory. Given that the relationship between sleep disturbances and sleepiness during pregnancy is understudied, we examined their associations to determine whether...

The liver in diabetes: current state and future perspectives

Abstract Diabetes mellitus is strongly associated with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD). For many years, MASLD has not been recognised as either a common pathophysiological feature of type 2 diabetes or a diabetes-related complication. This special...

PLCG2 downregulation impairs synaptic function and increases Alzheimer’s disease hallmarks in neuronal cultures

We developed a high-content screening to investigate how Alzheimer’s disease (AD) genetic risk factors may affect synaptic mechanisms in rat primary neuronal cultures. Of the target genes identified, we found that Plcg2 downregulation in mouse dentate gyrus neurons consistently d...

CODAC: Constraint-based Deep Active Clustering

Abstract Constraint-based Deep Active Clustering (CODAC) integrates actively selected pairwise constraints into deep representation learning to efficiently improve existing cluster structures, even under tight query budgets. CODAC encodes the constraint information into the embed...