Jakob Østergaard, MD, PhD
Clinical researcher and Associate Professor
Research team
Research areas
- Diabetic kidney disease
- Animal models
- Complement system
- Diabetes complication
Research description
- I study adverse effects of the innate immune system’s complement cascade in diabetic kidney disease using animal models and clinical data with special focus on the pattern-recognition molecules of the lectin pathway of complement activation, e.g., MBL and H-ficolin.
- Clinical studies link MBL and H-ficolin to diabetic kidney disease, which is supported by causal effects of MBL in animal studies. Also, genetically determined high MBL levels is associated with increased all-cause in diabetes patients.
- Additional studies support that the hypothesized interactions between diabetes-induced glycations and pattern-recognition molecules of the complement system, e.g., MBL, may underlie complement attack in diabetes.