Laura H. K. Gregersen

Position
PhD student

Laura Gregersen graduated as a Bachelor in Food Science in 2016 and as a Master of Science in Clinical Nutrition in 2019. Laura is co-affiliated as a PhD student with the Focused Research Unit for Molecular Diagnostics and Clinical Research, University Hospital of Southern Denmark (University of Southern Denmark), and as a fellow of Clinical Epidemiology at Musculoskeletal Statistics Unit at The Parker Institute.

Since the 1st of January 2021, Laura has been enrolled as a PhD student with the project: “Effects of gluten intake on development and disease course of chronic inflammatory disease (CID)”. Understanding and improving the prognosis of chronic inflammatory diseases should be a priority in clinical research and practice. During the PhD thesis, a specific factor (i.e. gluten intake) will be evaluated as to whether this is associated with disease development (epidemiological research) and prognosis (prognostic factor research); in part 1 of the project, Laura will develop, and validate the impact of the statistical analysis, predicting the individual risk of a future outcome. In part 2, Laura will design, and pilot test an intervention study to further analyze associations between CID prognosis and gluten intake.

We envision that the use of prognostic information would help tailor treatment decisions to an individual or group of individuals with similar characteristics: Specifically, the aim is to explore the clinical (prognostic) value of dietary patterns on response to treatment in patients with chronic inflammatory diseases who initiate treatment with a biological agent.