Sofia K Forslund

Sofia K Forslund
Max-Delbrück-Centrum für Molekulare Medizin | MDC · Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC)

PhD Biochemistry SU

About

184
Publications
63,084
Reads
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41,546
Citations
Citations since 2017
139 Research Items
27752 Citations
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Introduction
Junior Group Leader at the ECRC (MDC & Charité joint center) in Berlin. Visitor of the SCB unit at EMBL. Computational biologist interested in high-throughput methods for host-microbiome systems medicine, especially in cardiometabolic disease. Secondary focus/interest in evolutionary bioinformatics, especially using orthology for gene function prediction.
Additional affiliations
September 2015 - present
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Position
  • Researcher
January 2012 - September 2015
European Molecular Biology Laboratory
Position
  • PostDoc Position
Education
September 2006 - October 2011
Stockholm University
Field of study
  • Biochemistry with Theoretical Chemistry, esp. Bioinformatics
September 2000 - August 2006
Uppsala University
Field of study
  • Bioinformatics
September 2000 - July 2006
Uppsala University
Field of study
  • Molecular Biotechnology

Publications

Publications (184)
Article
Full-text available
Abstract The host-microbiota co-metabolite trimethylamine N-oxide (TMAO) is linked to increased cardiovascular risk but how its circulating levels are regulated remains unclear. We applied “explainable” machine learning, univariate, multivariate and mediation analyses of fasting plasma TMAO concentration and a multitude of phenotypes in 1,741 adult...
Article
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Dietary lipids can affect metabolic health through gut microbiota-mediated mechanisms, but the influence of lipid-microbiota interaction on liver steatosis is largely unknown. We investigate the impact of dietary lipids on human gut microbiota composition and the effects of microbiota-lipid interactions on steatosis in male mice. In humans, low int...
Article
Objectives: Spondyloarthritis (SpA) is a group of immune-mediated diseases highly concomitant with non-musculoskeletal inflammatory disorders, such as acute anterior uveitis (AAU) and Crohn's disease (CD). The gut microbiome represents a promising avenue to elucidate shared and distinct underlying pathophysiology. Method: We performed 16S rRNA s...
Article
Full-text available
Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global threat to human and animal health and well-being. To understand AMR dynamics, it is important to monitor resistant bacteria and resistance genes in all relevant settings. However, while monitoring of AMR has been implemented in clinical and veterinary settings, comprehensive monitoring of AMR in the enviro...
Article
Cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) made cardiac surgery possible. Despite its almost 70 years of existence and countless design improvements, it still represents one of the most invasive interventions on the human body’s physiological integrity. The adverse effects of CPB present as systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS), which in its most severe...
Article
Full-text available
We introduce LongDat, an R package that analyzes longitudinal multivariable (cohort) data while simultaneously accounting for a potentially large number of covariates. The primary use case is to differentiate direct from indirect effects of an intervention (or treatment) and to identify covariates (potential mechanistic intermediates) in longitudin...
Article
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Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is an important heart rhythm disorder in aging populations. The gut microbiome composition has been previously related to cardiovascular disease risk factors. Whether the gut microbial profile is also associated with the risk of AF remains unknown. Methods: We examined the associations of prevalent and incide...
Article
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Aims: Cardiac energy metabolism is centrally involved in heart failure (HF), although the direction of the metabolic alterations is complex and likely dependent on the particular stage of HF progression. Vascular endothelial growth factor B (VEGF-B) has been shown to modulate metabolic processes and to induce physiological cardiac hypertrophy; thu...
Article
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Background Impaired respiratory and intestinal microbiome composition is linked to cystic fibrosis lung disease severity. In people with cystic fibrosis (pwCF), regular exercise is recommended to delay disease progression and preserve a stable lung function. An optimal nutritional status is vital for best clinical outcomes. Our study investigated w...
Article
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Sub-Saharan Africa has increased morbidity and mortality related to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). COPD among people living with HIV (PLWH) has not been well studied in this region, where HIV/AIDS is endemic. Increasing evidence suggests that respiratory microbial composition plays a role in COPD severity. Therefore, we aimed to inve...
Article
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Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) has significantly contributed to global mortality, with three million deaths reported annually. This impact is expected to increase over the next 40 years, with approximately 5 million people predicted to succumb to COPD-related deaths annually. Immune mechanisms driving disease progression have not been...
Article
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Background Multiple sclerosis is a chronic immune-mediated disease of the brain and spinal cord resulting in physical and cognitive impairment in young adults. It is hypothesized that a disrupted bacterial and viral gut microbiota is a part of the pathogenesis mediating disease impact through an altered gut microbiota-brain axis. The aim of this st...
Preprint
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The clinical course of the 2019 coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is variable and to a substantial degree still unpredictable, especially in persons who have neither been vaccinated nor recovered from previous infection. We hypothesized that disease progression and inflammatory responses were associated with alterations in the microbiome and metabolom...
Article
Full-text available
Recent studies have demonstrated the effect of probiotics, prebiotics, and synbiotics on adiponectin and leptin levels; however, those findings remain contested. The present study aimed to explore the impact of probiotics/synbiotics on appetite-regulating hormones and the desire to eat. Methods A systematic review was conducted by searching the Me...
Article
Experimental trials in organisms ranging from yeast to humans have shown that various forms of reducing food intake (caloric restriction) appear to increase both overall and healthy lifespan, delaying the onset of disease and slowing the progression of biomarkers of aging. The gut microbiota is considered one of the key environmental factors strong...
Article
Background: Phosphodiesterase 3A (PDE3A) gain-of-function mutations cause hypertension with brachydactyly (HTNB) and lead to stroke. Increased peripheral vascular resistance, rather than salt retention, is responsible. It is surprising that the few patients with HTNB examined so far did not develop cardiac hypertrophy or heart failure. We hypothes...
Preprint
Full-text available
S ummary paragraph Lung diseases due to infection and dysbiosis affect hundreds of millions of people world-wide ¹⁻⁴ . Microbial communities at the airway mucosal barrier are conserved and highly ordered ⁵ , reflecting symbiosis and co-evolution with human host factors ⁶ . Freed of selection to digest nutrients for the host, the airway microbiome u...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is characterized by a sustained proinflammatory response of the immune system, promoting hypertension and cardiovascular disease. The underlying mechanisms are incompletely understood, but may be linked to gut dysbiosis. Dysbiosis has been described in adults with CKD; however, comorbidities limit CKD-specif...
Article
Full-text available
Although the available evidence emphasizes the beneficial effects of probiotics in normalizing various cardiometabolic markers, there is still substantial uncertainty in this regard. Thus, we set out to determine the effect sizes of probiotics on blood lipid parameters more coherently. A systematic literature search of the Medline (PubMed) and Scop...
Article
Full-text available
Aims Hypertension (HTN) can lead to heart and kidney damage. The gut microbiota has been linked to HTN, although it is difficult to estimate its significance due to the variety of other features known to influence HTN. In the present study, we used germ-free (GF) and colonized (COL) littermate mice to quantify the impact of microbial colonization o...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: Impaired respiratory and intestinal microbiome composition is linked to cystic fibrosis lung disease severity. In people with cystic fibrosis (pwCF), regular exercise is recommended to delay disease progression and preserve a stable lung function. An optimal nutritional status is vital for best clinical outcomes. Our study investigated...
Article
Full-text available
Treated wastewater is a major pathway by which antibiotic resistance genes (ARG) enter aquatic ecosystems. However, knowledge gaps remain concerning the dissemination of specific ARG and their association with bacterial hosts. Here, we employed shotgun metagenomics to track ARG and taxonomic markers in river biofilms along a gradient of fecal pollu...
Article
Full-text available
Prokaryotic Mobile Genetic Elements (MGEs) such as transposons, integrons, phages and plasmids, play important roles in prokaryotic evolution and in the dispersal of cargo functions like antibiotic resistance. However, each of these MGE types is usually annotated and analysed individually, hampering a global understanding of phylogenetic and enviro...
Article
Full-text available
Background Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a heterogeneous neuropsychiatric disorder, for which current treatment has insufficient efficacy and severe adverse effects. The modifiable gut microbiome might be a potential target for intervention to improve neurobiological functions through the gut-microbiome-brain axis. Methods In this case-control study, gut...
Article
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Previous microbiome and metabolome analyses exploring non-communicable diseases have paid scant attention to major confounders of study outcomes, such as common, pre-morbid and co-morbid conditions, or polypharmacy. Here, in the context of ischemic heart disease (IHD), we used a study design that recapitulates disease initiation, escalation and res...
Article
Full-text available
Complex diseases, such as coronary artery disease (CAD), are often multifactorial, caused by multiple underlying pathological mechanisms. Here, to study the multifactorial nature of CAD, we performed comprehensive clinical and multi-omic profiling, including serum metabolomics and gut microbiome data, for 199 patients with acute coronary syndrome (...
Preprint
Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is characterized by a sustained pro-inflammatory response. The underlying mechanisms are incompletely understood, but may be linked to gut dysbiosis. Dysbiosis has been described in adults with CKD; however, comorbidities limit CKD-specific conclusions. We analyzed the fecal microbiome, metabolites and immune phenotypes...
Article
Full-text available
Microbial genes encode the majority of the functional repertoire of life on earth. However, despite increasing efforts in metagenomic sequencing of various habitats1–3, little is known about the distribution of genes across the global biosphere, with implications for human and planetary health. Here we constructed a non-redundant gene catalogue of...
Article
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Objectives Gut microbiota is a key component in obesity and type 2 diabetes, yet mechanisms and metabolites central to this interaction remain unclear. We examined the human gut microbiome’s functional composition in healthy metabolic state and the most severe states of obesity and type 2 diabetes within the MetaCardis cohort. We focused on the rol...
Article
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High salt intake ranks among the most important risk factors for noncommunicable diseases. Western diets, which are typically high in salt, are associated with a high prevalence of obesity. High salt is thought to be a potential risk factor for obesity independent of energy intake, although the underlying mechanisms are insufficiently understood. A...
Article
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Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) is a neglected, debilitating multi-systemic disease without diagnostic marker or therapy. Despite evidence for neurological, immunological, infectious, muscular and endocrine pathophysiological abnormalities, the etiology and a clear pathophysiology remains unclear. The gut microbiome...
Article
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Whether the gut microbiome in obesity is characterized by lower diversity and altered composition at the phylum or genus level may be more accurately investigated using high-throughput sequencing technologies. We conducted a systematic review in PubMed and Embase including 32 cross-sectional studies assessing the gut microbiome composition by high-...
Article
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During the transition from a healthy state to cardiometabolic disease, patients become heavily medicated, which leads to an increasingly aberrant gut microbiome and serum metabolome, and complicates biomarker discovery1,2,3,4,5. Here, through integrated multi-omics analyses of 2,173 European residents from the MetaCardis cohort, we show that the ex...
Article
Full-text available
Antibiotics are used to fight pathogens but also target commensal bacteria, disturbing the composition of gut microbiota and causing dysbiosis and disease1. Despite this well-known collateral damage, the activity spectrum of different antibiotic classes on gut bacteria remains poorly characterized. Here we characterize further 144 antibiotics from...
Article
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The particularly interdisciplinary nature of human microbiome research makes the organization and reporting of results spanning epidemiology, biology, bioinformatics, translational medicine and statistics a challenge. Commonly used reporting guidelines for observational or genetic epidemiology studies lack key features specific to microbiome studie...
Article
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In any research field, data access and data integration are major challenges that even large, well-established consortia face. Although data sharing initiatives are increasing, joint data analyses on nutrition and microbiomics in health and disease are still scarce. We aimed to identify observational studies with data on nutrition and gut microbiom...
Preprint
Full-text available
Aims Hypertension (HTN) can lead to heart and kidney damage. The gut microbiota has been linked to HTN, although it is difficult to estimate its significance due to the variety of other features known to influence HTN. In the present study, we used germ-free (GF) and colonized (COL) littermate mice to quantify the impact of microbial colonization o...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Protein intake has been associated with the development of pre-diabetes (pre-T2D) and type 2 diabetes (T2D). The gut microbiota has the capacity to produce harmful metabolites derived from dietary protein. Furthermore, both the gut microbiota composition and metabolic status (e.g., insulin resistance) can be modulated by diet and ethni...
Article
Sodium can accumulate in the skin, at concentrations exceeding serum levels. High sodium environment can lead to pathogenic T helper (Th)17 cell expansion. Psoriasis is a chronic inflammatory skin disease in which interleukin (IL)-17-producing Th17 cells play a crucial role. In an observational study, we measured skin sodium content in psoriasis pa...
Article
Full-text available
Objective Gut microbial products are involved in regulation of host metabolism. In human and experimental studies, we explored the potential role of hippurate, a hepatic phase 2 conjugation product of microbial benzoate, as a marker and mediator of metabolic health. Design In 271 middle-aged non-diabetic Danish individuals, who were stratified on...
Article
Full-text available
Background The intestinal barrier plays an important role in the defense against infections, and nutritional, endocrine, and immune functions. The gut microbiota playing an important role in development of the gastrointestinal tract can impact intestinal permeability and immunity during early life, but data concerning this problem are scarce. Meth...
Article
Full-text available
Background: Dietary high salt (HS) is a leading risk factor for mortality and morbidity. Serum sodium transiently increases postprandially, but can also accumulate at sites of inflammation affecting differentiation and function of innate and adaptive immune cells. Here, we focus on how changes in extracellular sodium, mimicking alterations in the c...
Article
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Gain-of-function mutations in the CACNA1H gene (encoding the T-type calcium channel CaV3.2) cause autosomal-dominant familial hyperaldosteronism type IV (FH-IV) and early-onset hypertension in humans. We used CRISPR/Cas9 to generate Cacna1h M1560V/+ knockin mice as a model of the most common FH-IV mutation, along with corresponding knockout mice (C...
Article
The pathogenesis of hypertension is known to involve a diverse range of contributing factors including genetic, environmental, hormonal, hemodynamic and inflammatory forces, to name a few. There is mounting evidence to suggest that the gut microbiome plays an important role in the development and pathogenesis of hypertension. The gastrointestinal t...
Article
Full-text available
IntroductionProbiotics and prebiotics are widely used for recovery of the human gut microbiome after antibiotic treatment. High antibiotic usage is especially common in children with developing microbiome. We hypothesized that dry Mare’s milk, which is rich in biologically active substances without containing live bacteria, could be used as a prebi...
Article
Full-text available
Periods of fasting and refeeding may reduce cardiometabolic risk elevated by Western diet. Here we show in the substudy of NCT02099968, investigating the clinical parameters, the immunome and gut microbiome exploratory endpoints, that in hypertensive metabolic syndrome patients, a 5-day fast followed by a modified Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertens...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background The intestinal barrier plays an important role in the defense against infections, and nutritional, endocrine, and immune functions. The gut microbiota playing important role in development of the gastrointestinal tract can impact intestinal permeability and immunity during early life, but data concerning this problem are scare.Methods We...
Article
Full-text available
Microbiota-host-diet interactions contribute to the development of metabolic diseases. Imidazole propionate is a novel microbially produced metabolite from histidine, which impairs glucose metabolism. Here, we show that subjects with prediabetes and diabetes in the MetaCardis cohort from three European countries have elevated serum imidazole propio...
Poster
Introduction: The gut microbiota is suspected to play a role in hypertension and hypertensive end organ damage. In the present study, we used germ-free mice to demonstrate that microbial colonization modulates the response to a hypertensive stimulus. Methods: Four-week-old male germ-free C57BL6/J littermates were randomized to remain germ-free (GF)...
Article
Full-text available
BACKGROUND & AIMS After birth, the immune system matures via interactions with microbes in the gut. The S100 calcium binding proteins S100A8 and S100A9, and their extracellular complex form, S100A8–A9, are found in high amounts in human breast milk. We studied levels of S100A8–A9 in fecal samples (also called fecal calprotectin) from newborns and d...
Article
Background: High blood pressure is the primary risk factor for cardiovascular death worldwide. Autosomal dominant hypertension with brachydactyly clinically resembles salt-resistant essential hypertension and causes death by stroke before 50 years of age. We recently implicated the gene encoding phosphodiesterase 3A (PDE3A); however, in vivo model...
Preprint
Full-text available
Background: Understanding and controlling the spread of antimicrobial resistance is one of the greatest challenges of modern medicine. To this end many efforts focus on characterising the human resistome or the set of antibiotic resistance determinants within the microbiome of an individual. Aside from antibiotic use, other host environmental and g...
Article
Abstract Aims Recent technical developments have allowed the study of the human microbiome to accelerate at an unprecedented pace. Methodological differences may have considerable impact on the results obtained. Thus, we investigated how different storage, isolation, and DNA extraction methods can influence the characterization of the intestinal mi...
Article
Aims: Recent technical developments have allowed the study of the human microbiome to accelerate at an unprecedented pace. Methodological differences may have considerable impact on the results obtained. Thus, we investigated how different storage, isolation and DNA extraction methods can influence the characterization of the intestinal microbiome...
Article
Full-text available
Microbiome community typing analyses have recently identified the Bacteroides2 (Bact2) enterotype, an intestinal microbiota configuration that is associated with systemic inflammation and has a high prevalence in loose stools in humans1,2. Bact2 is characterized by a high proportion of Bacteroides, a low proportion of Faecalibacterium and low micro...
Article
Short-chain fatty acids are processed from indigestible dietary fibers by gut bacteria and have immunomodulatory properties. Here, we investigate propionic acid (PA) in multiple sclerosis (MS), an autoimmune and neurodegenerative disease. Serum and feces of subjects with MS exhibited significantly reduced PA amounts compared with controls, particul...
Preprint
Full-text available
Periods of fasting and refeeding may reduce cardiometabolic risk elevated by Western diet. We show that in hypertensive metabolic syndrome (MetS) patients (n=35), a 5-day fast followed by a modified DASH diet (Dietary Approach to Stop Hypertension) reduced systolic blood pressure (SBP), antihypertensive medication need, and body-mass index (BMI) at...
Preprint
Full-text available
Antibiotics are used for fighting pathogens, but also target our commensal bacteria as a side effect, disturbing the gut microbiota composition and causing dysbiosis and disease. Despite this well-known collateral damage, the activity spectrum of the different antibiotic classes on gut bacteria remains poorly characterized. Having monitored the act...
Article
Full-text available
Gain-of-function mutations in the chloride channel ClC-2 were recently described as a cause of familial hyperaldosteronism type II (FH-II). Here, we report the generation of a mouse model carrying a missense mutation homologous to the most common FH-II-associated CLCN2 mutation. In these Clcn2R180Q/+ mice, adrenal morphology is normal, but Cyp11b2...