Center for Clinical Heart Research, Oslo University Hospital Ullevaal and Department of Cardiology, Oslo University Hospital Ullevaal and Department of Pharmacology, University of Oslo

Current research focus

Clinicial research focusing on patients with acute ST-elevation myocardial infarction. Comobidity and complications, reperfusion injury, acute heart failure treatment, cardiac arrest survivors and type 2-diabetes. Effects of the calcium sensitizer levosimendan on patients with myocardial infarction and acute heart failure. Effects and mechanisms of levosimendan in rat papillary muscles. Diabetes, pre-diabetes and coronary heart disease. Association between inflammation and hyperglycaemia. Efffect of post-conditioning on ischaemia-reperfusion damage. Biobanking in ST-elevation myocardial infarction. Prognostications after cardiac arrest. Left-ventricular function during therapeutic hypothermia. Hemodynamic monitoring with pulse wawe analysis during therapeutic hypothermia in patients with cardiac arrest, comparison with echocardiography.

Research projects

Project manager

• Changes of expression of the cardiac NKCC in ischemic heart failure
• Inflammation and ischemia/reperfusion injury in STEMI patients treated by PCI and ischemic postconditioning

Supervisor

• Safety and efficacy of levosimendan in patients with acute myocardial infarction complicated by symptomatic left ventricular failure
• Impaired glucose tolerance in patients with acute myocardial infarction.
• Postconditioning in ST-elevation myocardial infarction treated with primary PCI.
• NORCAST- Norwegian Cardiorespiratory Arrest Study
• Inflammatory biomarkers and growth factors in patients with ST-elevation myocardial infarction

Collaborator

• Involvement of phosphorylation of myosin light chain (MLC) in the inotropic responses to stimulation of Gq/11 and/or G12/13 coupled receptors
• Substrate specificities and function of G protein-coupled receptor kinase (GRK) isoforms in adult, differentiated cardiac myocytes
• Characterization of increased calcium sensitivity in heart muscle as inotropic mechanism for receptor stimulation and for levosimendan.
• Gender differences in acute myocardial infarction
• Neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) in coronary artery disease. Potential prognostic value and roles in atherothrombosis