Brustad Group – Infectious and Atopic Diseases in Childhood

The Brustad Group investigates early-life disease patterns of infectious and atopic diseases including eczema, allergy and asthma for better prevention in childhood.

Research focus

The aim is to understand why some children are more prone to infection and atopic diseases in early-life than others.

We are doing this by investigating the interplay between these diseases, the trajectories throughout childhood and the underlying driving mechanisms causing disease.

We use clinical data from the Danish COPSAC mother-child cohorts with replication in international cohorts and national registers and tests our hypotheses in experimental cell models.

Our unique set-up with daily registrations of common infections during the first years of life in combination with an extensive clinical follow-up with diagnosing of atopic diseases, collection of blood samples, and assessment of environmental and lifestyle factors until adulthood allows us to track individual health status during childhood in the COPSAC cohorts.

We utilize multi-omics data including metabolomics and proteomics to identify pathways and biomarkers related to disease risk with the purpose of contributing to the development of targeted prevention.

Techniques

List the main techniques used in the lab.

Clinical cohort data
Longitudinal data collection
Environmental and lifestyle influences
Multi-omics data integration
Experimental cell models
Danish national health registers

Research projects

The group is currently focusing on these main research projects:

Early environmental and host factors for development of childhood atopic dermatitis using proteomic and metabolomic data.
Infectious diseases in early childhood: Environmental risk factors, characterization of disease trajectories and early-life biomarkers.
The overlap between infectious diseases and atopic dermatitis: Identification of shared perinatal mechanisms and disease pathways.