Current treatment strategies for endocrine and metabolic diseases are often sub-optimal. Both the diseases and the treatments can have adverse effects on the brain. Svetlana Lajic hopes to improve therapeutic strategies. Meet one of the new professors of Karolinska Institutet who will participate in this year's installation ceremony at Aula Medica on 9 October.
Text: Karin Tideström, for KI's installation ceremony booklet 2025
What are you researching?
"We're studying brain health in people with primary adrenal failure and inherited metabolic diseases. We follow patients from the fetal stage to adulthood to understand how different treatments affect brain development and cognition. We thus also evaluate the long-term effects of neonatal screening."
Why is this important?
"Current therapies for conditions like congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH) and Addison's disease are far from perfect. Prolonged cortisone treatment impacts both metabolic health and cognitive functions, such as the working memory. Early diagnosis through neonatal screening has improved prognoses, but we still know little about how the brain is affected in the long term. We're doing this research to develop better therapeutic strategies to help make it easier for children and adults to cope with school and work and to improve their quality of life."
How are you going about it?
"We're using national cohort studies and analysing clinical data, data from MRI/MRS brain imaging, neuropsychological tests, eye-tracking and collated biomarkers from birth and onwards. Combining these enables us to trace cognitive development and other health parameters."
What are your findings to date?
"Children who are diagnosed through neonatal screening and receive early treatment for CAH have normal cognitive development, but in adulthood, changes in brain structure and function still occur, which underlines the importance of optimising the treatment for an entire lifetime. Prenatal dexamethasone treatment for CAH have adverse effects and are therefore no longer used in Sweden. For metabolic diseases, we've seen a correlation between biomarkers, enzyme activity and clinical outcomes, which has enabled the design of more personalised dietary therapy."
About Svetlana Lajic
Professor of Paediatric Endocrinology at the Department of Women's and Children's Health
Svetlana Lajic was born in 1969 in Stockholm. She took her medical degree from Karolinska Institutet in 1994 and a PhD in paediatric endocrinology in 1998. Her postdoc studies were completed at Imperial College in London, UK. She became a docent at the Department of Women's and Children's Health, Karolinska Institutet, in 2009, and a paediatrician at Karolinska University Hospital that same year. In 2022, she was appointed professor of paediatrics at the Sahlgrenska Academy, Gothenburg University, and adjunct professor of paediatric endocrinology and inherited metabolic diseases at Karolinska Institutet. She currently has a combined position as researcher and consultant at the Astrid Lindgren Children's Hospital. Svetlana Lajic was appointed Professor at Karolinska Institutet on 25 June 2025.
