Final posting dates for letters and packages – domestic Christmas

Marie Karlsen

Thursday December 4, at 08:00-09:00

For more information

The midway evaluation will take place in the seminar room on the 7th floor of the Lab-building

We wish to invite you all to the next monthly K1/K2 Seminar Series!

Title: “B-cell depletion in chronic fatigue syndrome”

Held by Øystein Fluge, Senior Scientist, Department of Clinical Science

When: Wednesday, December 3rd, 14:15-15:00.

Where: Main Auditorium, 3rd floor, Sentralblokken.

Chair: Roland Jonsson

Abstract: Chief Physician and Senior Scientist Øystein Fluge, together with colleague Olav Mella, study the effects of the cancer medicine Rituximab on ME-patients, also known as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. This year they have initiated a double blind study in order to test Rituximab on patients. At this seminar Øystein Fluge will talk about his exciting work, about Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and the effects of Rituximab.

On December 27, 2104, The Pasteur Foundation will award scholarships to Norwegian scientists who intend to study a topic related to infectious agents, chemistry or the fermentation industry. Allocation of funding is preferably awarded young, active and promising researchers, below the doctoral level.
For more information (In norwegian)

Deadline December 15th.

The Meltzer Research Fund annually distributes awards for young reasearchers and for excellence in the dissemination of research. All professors and heads of department at the University of Bergen are eligible to nominate candidates to the Fund’s awards.

Deadline for sending in suggestions for nominations is December 1, 2014.
More information

As part of the annual meeting of American College of Rheumatology (ACR) in Boston, USA, PhD-Candidate/LIS-doctor Maria Boge Lauvsnes was awarded the Sjögren’s Syndrome Foundation’s Outstanding Abstract Award. Through her work – Hippocampal Atrophy Is Associated with Anti-NR2 Antibodies in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus and Primary Sjögren’s Syndrome – she has shown that a type of anti-NMDA receptor antibodies (anti-NR2 antibodies) cause atrophy of the brain structure hippocampus in humans with the immunological diseases SLE and primary Sjögren’s syndrome. This has been confirmed in animal models, which have revealed that anti-NR2 antibodies cause neuronal death of hippocampus in mice.

Such antibodies are associated with cognitive failure in both SLE and primary Sjögren’s syndrome, and they may constitute a general mechanism for cerebral affection with immunopathies.

Maria Boge Lauvsnes works for the Clinical Immunological Research Group at Stavanger University Hospital