Name: Pernille Ravn,

Title: MD, PhD, Senior Consultant, Associate professor

Current position: Senior Consultant, Dpt. for Pulmonary and Infectious Diseases

Head of Research at Dpt. for Pulmonary and Infectious Diseases

Associate Professor University of Copenhagen

Education: M.D (1987), Specialist in Infectious Diseases (2006), PhD (1997).

Research Experience Research Interest:

Early diagnosis, prevention of infectious diseases and patient near clinical research is the cornerstones of my research. I have long standing experience within evaluation of new diagnostic tests and assessment of implementation strategies in clinical practice and within the field of prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers and the impact of host factors on the immunology of bio-marker responses.

Ongoing Research: Since the discovery of penicillin by A. Fleming in 1928 we have had limited success in reducing death due to pneumonia. Pneumonia today is a disease of the aging population and will be even more eminent in the future. The scope of my current research is to improve management of pneumonia through systematic and applied multidisciplinary and multicentre research our initiative is young and we aim to establish a research platform close to the patients, attractive to scientists from various fields.

 I am since 2013 employed as head of research department with the goal to establish a research platform for pulmonary infections. In the first year, I have established the  “The Pneumonia Initiative” embracing i)  the “Pneumonia Research Group” doing clinical epidemiological and microbiological research where we aim at studying interactions between Diabetes, Physical activity and Pneumonia,  ii) “The Pneumonia Management Pathway”  assessing the quality of the management of patients with pneumonia at Nordsjællands Hospital and we will assess improvement of our care and  iii) an international collaboration with the European Network on Pneumonia Research, CAPNETZ, in Germany.  By the end of 2014 we will be ready to publish clinical epidemiological results from the largest Danish Pneumonia cohort ever and to participate in European studies and initiate multicentre studies in Denmark and Europe.

I am since many years involved in research focusing on improving the diagnosis and prevention of tuberculosis.

Pneumonia and tuberculosis are in many ways; both diseases have no X- factor and both diseases are associated with severe co-morbidity and impaired immunity, but where 50% of TB patients have a confirmed microbiological diagnosis only 21% of patients with pneumonia have a confirmed diagnosis.

Experience with research capacity building: Coordinator and PI for EU- project in Addis Ababa Ethiopia, 1994-98. Head of a 3 year Danida financed research program on TB diagnosis in Tanzania. Head of the newly established CAPNETZ-Denmark research collaboration with CAPNETZ Germany. One of the co-inventers of the Research network in Europe www.TB_NET.org. 

Teaching/supervision graduate and post-graduate education:

Supervisor of 6 PhD students (3 ongoing), 2 international masters and several Danish bachelor and masters students. Reviewer for 2 Danish and 3 international PhD theses, Long term teaching and supervising experience.

Reviewer; among others for: AJRCCM. J Rheumatology, BMC, PLoes One, Ugeskrift for Læger, IJTLD, Tuberculosis, SJID, Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics, Respiration Research, Respiratory Medicine, CID. ERJ, JI,  Welcome Trust Foundation, Medical Research CounselUK, LiverpoolSchool of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene. VINNOVA.Grants from Danida and Danish Research Council, Lundbeck, Danmarks Lungeforening, as well as grants from University hospitals Herlev and Hillerød and others.

Publications

82 publications, 71 indexed and peer reviewed, 10 reviews or guidelines and 4 patent applications. Google scholar citation index assessed  April 2014; h-Index: 31, h10-index: 43.

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Selected publications

*C. Soborg, M. Ruhwald, P. H. Andersen, P. Ravn. Six years Follow up of 522 HIV-positive individuals screened for Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection in Denmark. ERJ 2014

*T S Hermansen, V Ø Thomsen, T Lillebaek, P Ravn,  Non-tuberculous mycobacteria and the performance of interferon gamma release assays in Denmark. PLOS ONE 2014

*Faurholt-Jepsen D, Aabye MG, Ravn P, et al. Diabetes is associated with lower  tuberculosis  antigen-specific interferon gamma release in Tanzanian tuberculosis patients and non-tuberculosis controls. Scand J Infect Dis. 2014

*Rose MV, Kroidl I, and  Ravn P. Evaluation of Quantiferon Microtube, a Quantiferon Gold In-Tube like test using 0.9ml of blood, for diagnosing tuberculosis infection in children and adults.  Running title: A comparison of QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube Test and new QuantiFERON-Microtube assay in children suspect of active TB and adults with active TB. ERJ 2013-08-20

*Rose MV, Kimaro G, Thomas N Nissen,  Kroidl I, Hoelscher M,  Bygbjerg I, Mfinanga GSM, Ravn P. Poor performance of QuantiFERON®-TB Gold In-Tube in/for diagnosing active tuberculosis in children in high burden setting.  Running title: Evaluation of the performance of the QuantiFERON®-TB Gold In-Tube test in diagnosing active TB in children in Tanzania. Ploes One 2013.

*Line Lindebo Holm; Michala Vaaben Rose; Pernille Ravn. Perspectives in implementing childhood tuberculosis research case definitions in a low-income, high burden setting. Journal of Infectious Diseases 2012;

*Ruhwald m. Aabye M, Ravn P. IP-10 release assays in the diagnosis of tuberculosis: Current status and future Direction. Expert Rev Mol Diagn. 2012 Mar;12(2):175-87. Review.

Name/date

Infection and Inflammation

Tuberculosis

Pneumonia

Immunodeficiency

Clinical research

Early diagnosis, prevention of infectious diseases and patient near clinical research are the cornerstones of my research. I have long standing experience within evaluation of new diagnostic tests and assessment of implementation strategies in clinical practice and I have substantial experience within the field of prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers and the impact of host factors on the immunology of bio-marker responses and diagnostic tests.

Since 2013, as head of research in our department I “The Pneumonia Initiative” embracing the “Pneumonia Research Group” doing clinical epidemiological and microbiologial research, “The Pneumonia Management Pathway” assessing the quality of the management of patients with pneumonia at NOH,  and established an international collaboration with the European Network on Pneumonia Research, CAPNETZ, in Germany. Since 2016 I am head of Cluster for Infection and Inflammation at NOH.Recently we started the Asylum-TB research project.

My perspectives are to improve the management of patients with infectious diseases through increased knowledge, to participate in national and European multicentre.

Pneumonia,Tuberculosis, Infection and Inflammation

I have received honorary for teaching from Schering Plough, Cellestis, Abbvie and MSD.

I have been advisor for Data Safety and Monitoring Board for Statens Serum Institut until 2015.

Together with Hvidovre Hospital and The Capital Region I hold a patent on IP-10 as a marker for TB infection.