Health Science Research at LiU

 

Autoimmunity and allergy

The adaptive immune system with its T-cells and antibody-producing B-cells changes throughout your entire life. In addition, we have a range of innate or native defence factors ready to quickly repel threats from the environment. In autoimmune diseases, the immune system tries to neutralize or eliminate the body¿s own cells or tissues.

Cancer

Cancer is a unifying concept for a number of diseases where abnormal cells divide , sometimes uncontrolled and invading other tissues. Cells from malignant tumours can spread to other parts of the body via blood or lymph. Scientists around the world are seeking to understand the various causes of cancer, and how to prevent, detect, and treat the disease.

Diabetes and metabolism

Metabolism is the processes in which nutrients are converted into energy and the building blocks that are used to produce new cell material. Excess energy is converted into fat and stored in the adipose tissue. Metabolism is a complex network of chemical reactions controlled by an even more complex network involving the nervous system and various hormones.

Functions and illnesses of the locomotor system

The locomotor system can be divided up into three main components: the body’s framework, which consists of the bones, connective tissues and ligaments, and joints that make movement possible and muscles that perform them. The circulation of the blood and the nervous system are also usually counted as part of the locomotor system.

Health and Society

This field of research is interdisciplinary and involves knowledge, methods, and researchers from various disciplines. The research involves how environmental and social changes affect the development of health at the level of the individual, the group, and society, as well as strategies that are applied by the various actors in a welfare society to promote health and/or help people to experience a sense of well-being.

Infection and inflammation

Inflammation is a complex host reaction to foreign substances or cell and tissue injury. It can be caused by foreign microorganisms or by the immune system attacking its own tissue. Inflammation is initiated in the peripheral blood vessels that become permeable to plasma proteins and immune cells, which leave the blood stream, and recruited to, and decontaminate microorganisms and dead cells in the tissue.

Medical image science

Medical image science comprises techniques and processes intended to create images of a person for medical purposes. It reaches across disciplines such as radiology, endoscopy, microscopy, image processing and visualization. Radiology means imaging the inside of the human body for the purpose of making a diagnosis.

Molecular and cell biology

The human body contains on average 50 to 75 trillion cells of hundreds of different types, all with a special task. The individual cell possesses properties that define life; it can grow, divide itself, receive and respond to stimuli from its surroundings, and carry out an impressive number of chemical reactions. The function determines how the cell is built and where it is found in the body.

Nursing science

Nursing is a science dealing with human beings throughout their life-cycle. Research focuses on generating knowledge of health-promotion aiming at maintaining and improving health, alleviating suffering and creating conditions for a peaceful death. Research is also directed towards exploring the well-being of human beings, patients’ and their families’ needs and reactions to illness.

Regenerative medicine

Many organs and tissues lack the ability to regenerate after an injury. “Healing” means, then, that the affected area is replaced by scar tissue, which does not have the original organ’s function. The “regenerative medicine” field of research aims at recreating functional organs and tissues instead of scars. Organs are formed during foetal development from various types of stem cells.

Reproductive health

According to WHO, the concept includes a satisfying and safe sex life with access to good contraception, the ability to reproduce, and good care during pregnancy and childbirth. More broadly, however, the concept includes women’s health before, during, and after the reproductive period in their lives. In an international comparison, reproductive health is considered to be good in Sweden.

Stomach and intestinal diseases

In the nine-meter long intestinal canal foods are broken down allowing nutrients to be absorbed in a step-by-step process directed by the gut microbial flora, digestive enzymes, hormones and signals from the nervous system. It is not only the body’s largest immune and nervous organs, but it also contains around 100-1000 billion bacteria of great diversity.

Surgery

Surgery was part of the earliest medical arts. As far back as the Stone Age, the first neurosurgeons bored holes in human skulls, down to the dura mater, in order to try to cure various afflictions in the brain. The word comes from the Greek cheirourgike, meaning “work with the hands”. Today, surgery is used to repair or remove sick organs and tissues throughout the body.

The brain and the rest of the nervous system

The nervous system receives and stores information, processes and interprets sensory information, and controls bodily functions. The brain is the most complicated organ in the human body. It gives us our personality and our feelings, and is responsible for consciousness, self-awareness, time perception, and memory functions.

The heart and blood vessels

The cardiovascular system is a fascinating organ system whose task is to supply all the body’s organs with oxygen and nutrients, as well as carrying away waste products. During physical activity, stress, or threat, the amount can increase substantially. Cardiovascular diseases cause 17 million deaths a year around the world. In Sweden it accounts for nearly half of all deaths.

Page responsible: susanne.b.karlsson@liu.se
Last updated: Thu Aug 23 09:24:31 CEST 2012