This presentation aims to increase the students’ knowledge about environmental epidemiology, by introducing different study designs used to study health effects of exposure to outdoor air pollution. All study designs are illustrated by examples, starting with the Great Smog (Killer Fog) of London in 1952, one of the landmarks in environmental epidemiology.

Nearly one third of the world’s population are exposed to high levels of indoor air pollution from the household’s use of solid fuel. The fuel is mainly biomass burning under poor combustion conditions
in open fires or primitive stoves and with low ventilation. This costs more than 4 million lives every year and enormous suffering in particular among women and children.

What is air pollution? What is it in the air that is harmful? This lecture focuses on air pollution, where it occur, and how it spread.

In this presentation, we will describe the global levels and trends in major air pollutants and related health burden. Air pollution is an important global risk factor for disease. People who live in more polluted areas develop more often chronic and infectious disease and die prematurely as compared to people living in areas with low air pollution.

In large part of the World, people spend more than 90 percent of the time in indoor environments, where air quality is important for health. The environment outside the building, what goes on inside the building and the exchange of air pollutants affects the indoor air. Tight buildings can reduce energy consumption and entry of outdoor air pollutants, but unless ventilation is right indoor air pollutants from combustion processes, dampness, microbes, the dwellers bio effluents,
appliances, care and cleaning products, clothing, furniture, building materials, the underground and many other sources will build up indoors causing important health effects.

In this presentation, we will discuss how we can know whether one individual is more susceptible to harmful effect of air pollution than others are. Everyone is exposed, but some groups may be more susceptible to the harmful effect of air pollution than others may.

In this lecture, we will describe the mechanisms by which air pollution causes pulmonary health effects in the human population. The pulmonary health effects include exacerbation of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary diseases (COPD), increased risk of lower
respiratory tracts infections and lung cancer.

In this presentation, we will describe the mechanisms by which air pollution causes health effects in other parts of the body than the lungs. In continuation of this, we will discuss the important mechanisms of extra pulmonary health effect.

There is a long way before the whole world complies with the WHO guidelines for air quality, but the enormous burden of disease from outdoor air pollution forces us to increase action to come as far as possible. In continuation of this, we will discuss what we can do about air pollution at global, international, national, city and individual levels. Most of the actions to reduce air pollution also mitigates climate change and/or promote health in other ways – so there are many win-win and
win-win-win situations

In this presentation, we talk about adaptation and evolution of bacteria. Furthermore, we will discuss how you can work with or against evolution, regarding the treatment of bacteria and biofilms.

In this presentation, we will discuss how bacterial pathogen adapt to the human host environment during long-term chronic infections. In continuation of this, we will discuss how the opportunistic pathogen - Pseudomonas aeruginosa - evolves during adaptation to the airways of cystic fibrosis patients.

This presentation introduces bacteria and biofilms. Where do we find bacteria? Is it possible to live without bacteria? Should we be scared of bacteria?

The aim of this presentation is to expand the student knowledge about biofilm properties. In continuation of this, we will present different models for testing and study a biofilm, hereby: the crystal violet assay, filter biofilm, the semi solid model, and the flow-cell system

this presentation focuses on host response to biofilm infection. In continuation of this, we will go through the different types of host response to infections, which consists of at least three components: the non-inflammatory defense, the immune response and the inflammatory response.

In this presentation we will focus’ on host response to chronic infections. In continuation of this, we will talk about the polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNs), the respiratory burst and reactive oxygen species (ROS).

this presentation focuses on the problems of treating chronic infections. Furthermore, we will discuss why the host defense seems to be not working probably. In continuation of this, we will discuss whether the problem with chronic infections will increase over the years.

In this presentation, we will introduce the mechanisms involved in the tolerance of biofilms to antibiotics. In continuation of this, we will talk about specific tolerance mechanism, oxidative stress and the development of mutational resistance.

This presentation introduces chronic wounds and the non-healing properties of these. In continuation of this, we will provide a brief introduction to bacterial biofilms in chronic wounds, furthermore we will introduce some of the controversies and challenges we face working with this subject.

The aim of this presentation is to expand the students’ knowledge about the chronic lung infection, Cystic Fibrosis. Cystic Fibrosis is probably the most studied biofilm infection and much of our biofilm knowledge derive from this disease.

In this presentation, we will talk about diagnosis of bacteria and chronic infections in clinical practices. We will discuss why we need to diagnose bacteria in infections and what the biggest challenges are in diagnosing bacterial and chronic infections. Finally, we will discuss what the future will bring, regarding bacteria and diagnosis.