Lisen Arnheim Dahlström

Lisen Arnheim Dahlström

Affiliated to research

Research description

My research is within infectious disease epidemiology and has a main focus on prerequisites for optimal vaccination strategies. As vaccination is one of our most important tools in the combat of infectious disease it is important to maintain public trust. One way of doing this is to evaluate vaccine effectiveness and safety on a population-based level. We have in the past decades reduced the infectious disease burden with vaccination and we are now facing a situation where younger generations who never confronted the actual disease tend to shift their focus toward adverse events instead leading to anti-vaccine movements and misunderstandings about real and perceived risks. Further, with antibiotic resistance we need to develop new vaccines that need to be evaluated on a population-based level.

In addition to this I am also involved in several projects optimizing cervical cancer prevention through both vaccination and screening. In our group we use sophisticated population-based register matching and modelling methods in combination with lab and questionnaire data to evaluate:

1) Short and long term vaccine safety and effectiveness to ensure the reliability of the vaccines;

2) Infectious disease burden to investigate both effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of vaccine programmes;

3) Cervical screening setting and recommendations in a changing reality, as the HPV vaccine and new screening techniques will change the program we have today.

Ongoing research projects

Selected publications

Association of varying number of doses of quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine with incidence of condyloma. Herweijer E, Leval A, Ploner A, Eloranta S, Simard JF, Dillner J, et al JAMA 2014 Feb;311(6):597-603

A/H1N1 antibodies and TRIB2 autoantibodies in narcolepsy patients diagnosed in conjunction with the Pandemrix vaccination campaign in Sweden 2009-2010. Lind A, Ramelius A, Olsson T, Arnheim-Dahlström L, Lamb F, Khademi M, et al J. Autoimmun. 2014 May;50():99-106

Autoimmune, neurological, and venous thromboembolic adverse events after immunisation of adolescent girls with quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine in Denmark and Sweden: cohort study. Arnheim-Dahlström L, Pasternak B, Svanström H, Sparén P, Hviid A BMJ 2013 Oct;347():f5906

Quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine effectiveness: a Swedish national cohort study. Leval A, Herweijer E, Ploner A, Eloranta S, Fridman Simard J, Dillner J, et al J. Natl. Cancer Inst. 2013 Apr;105(7):469-74

Risk of presentation to hospital with epileptic seizures after vaccination with monovalent AS03 adjuvanted pandemic A/H1N1 2009 influenza vaccine (Pandemrix): self controlled case series study. Arnheim-Dahlström L, Hällgren J, Weibull CE, Sparén P BMJ 2012 Dec;345():e7594

Education

  • Bachelor of Science (Hons) in Biomedical Sciences, Manchester Metropolitan University, England. Major in Medical Microbiology.
  • Doctor of Philosophy (PhD in Infectious Disease Control (Smittskydd), Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell biology, Karolinska Institutet. Title of Thesis: Immunological responses in genital HPV infection and etiology of cervical cancer