Olav Rooijackers

Olav Rooijackers

Professor | Docent
Visiting address: Universitetssjukhuset Huddinge Hälsovägen, Enheten för anestesi K32, 14186 Stockholm
Postal address: H9 Klinisk vetenskap, intervention och teknik, H9 CLINTEC Anestesi, 171 77 Stockholm

About me

  • I am a trained biologist, or more accurate animal physiologist from the Agricultural University in Wageningen (NL). I have a PhD in clinical nutrition from the University of Maastricht (NL). After that I did 2 postdoc fellowships
  • one at the Endocrine Research Unit at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota (USA) and one at the Department of Medicine at the University of Edinburgh (UK).

    In January 2000 I joined the current research group at Karolinska Institutet (KI) and located at the Department of Perioperative Medicine and Intensive Care (PMI) at Karolinska Unversity Hospital in Flemingsberg. I started here as a assistent professor and head of the analytical lab. Presently I am a professor in experimental anesthesiology and intensive care and together with Professor Jan Wernerman run the ICU metabolism research group (see www.icu.metabolism.se). In addition, I am head of the Division of Anaesthesia and Intensive Care at the Department of Clinical Research, Intervention and Technology (CLINTEC) at KI, director of doctoral studies at CLINTEC, treasurer of the Swedish Society of Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (SWESPEN) and head of the Clinical Research Facility at the function PMI at Karolinska University Hospital in Flemingsberg.

Research

  • The research me and the research group are involved in is to study the metabolic and nutritional problems of critically ill patients. We mainly perform smaller mechanistic physiological studies, but also perfrom smaller intervention studies to elucidate how interventions actually work. The research group is run by me Associate Professor Åke Norberg and Senior Professor Jan Wernerman and includes clinical researchers (from students up to consultants), basic researchers (from exchange students to associate professors) technical staff and research nurses. Part of metabolism we focus on are:

    - Why do critically ill patients waste muscle mass and function so fast?
    - Why are plasma glutamine levels sometime high and sometime low in critically ill patients and how do they handle extra glutamine?
    - How much nutritional protein is beneficial for critically ill patients?
    - What is causing high lactate levels during sepsis and is this a problem?
    - Were does plasma albumin go when we are ill and especially when we are critically ill?
    - Can we use metabolomics to predict the development of organ failure in patients with an acute severe insult?
    - Can agressive early nutrition prolong organ failure by inhibiting autophagy?

    Details on projects and links to publications can be found on our research group's website.

Teaching

  • My teaching activities are mainly at the postgraduate level. I am involved in a local course in researcher and research ethics and my main interest in this course is the researcher ethics
  • how should be behave us as researchers? Ocassionally I organise a course in Clinical Techniques in the study of Endocrine and Metabolic Disorders
  • a course that teaches different techniques and approaches to study human subjects and patients.

    I am the co-organiser of a International course in Tracer Methodology in Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism. This is an intensive course taking place ones a year in a weekend to teach on the usage of stable isotope labelled metabolites to quantify metabolic fluxes in vivo in humans. For more information look at our website (http://icu-metabolism.se/tracers.html)

Articles

All other publications

Grants

Employments

  • Professor, Department of Clinical Science, Intervention and Technology, Karolinska Institutet, 2012-

Degrees and Education

  • Docent, Karolinska Institutet, 2002

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