GOLD Speakers

Merete Aase Eggesboe, MD, PhD

• Country: Norway

Biography:

Merete Eggesboe, MD and an environmental epidemiologist at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, is dedicated to understanding the role of the microbiome and environmental toxicants in children’s health. In order to do so she initiated the prospective HUMIS & NoMIC birth cohorts, encompassing more than 2600 mother-child pairs where the gut microbiome and toxicant exposure has been mapped in human milk and fecal samples. She has now followed them for 18 years and the longitudinal extensive data collection provides a wealth of research opportunities. It has also been linked to the Norwegain Patient Registry where all specialist diagnosis set on all research subjects are available. The focus so far has been on understanding their role in reproductive health, growth/obesity, neuropsychological functioning and vaccine immune responses. Recent studies have also looked at how toxicants in human milk may affect the infant’s microbiome. And vice versa: how our gut microbiome affects the metabolism of toxicants. She has been cited >6000 times over the last 5 years and has an h-index of 51 and has published more than 100 peer-reviewed papers. She is a popular speaker, leads several prestigious Norwegian Research council programs and participates in several EU projects.