Olli Kärkkäinen
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ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
Olli Kärkkäinen
@ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
790 followers 760 following 59 posts
Toxicometabolomics associate professor (tenure track) at the University of Eastern Finland and co-founder and CEO of Afekta Technologies Ltd. Metabolomics, alcohol, drugs, chemicals, treatment, disease progression. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0825-4956
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ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
Today in the #MetSoc2025 conference, I was presenting a poster about the microsample global metabolomics method development we have been doing in the 3D'omics project at Afekta Technologies !
Happy Olli presenting a poster in the Metabolomics 2025 conference
June 25, 2025 at 5:24 PM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
And of course we also celebrated the Midsummer!
Large Midsummer festive fire
June 20, 2025 at 7:45 PM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #1 032 115!
A virtual certificate with text "Celebrating 10M users on Bluesky, #1 032 115, Olli Kärkkäinen ‪@ollikarkkainen.bsky.social‬, joined on 17. syysk. 2023"
September 21, 2024 at 7:38 PM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
Now published!

Key finding was that, in general population, drinking more than 6 #alcohol doses per week was associated with low hippuric acid levels, similar to those with depression regareless of alcohol use

doi.org/10.1016/j.al...
Metabolites associated with self-reported alcohol use
August 22, 2024 at 7:22 PM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
Furthermore, continued smoking of both parents were associated with decreased birth weight, head circumference and Apgar score, and increased duration of hospital stay and need for special care after birth.
The associations of women's and their partners' smoking behaviours to birth outcomes. The mean and standard deviation of the (A) birthweight/head circumference ratio; (B) Apgar at 5 min; and (C) duration of hospital stay after birth in ‘Smoking status during pregnancy’ in multiple imputed data (n = 21 472). The one-way Anova was used to compare the groups to the non-smokers and p-values < 0.05 (*) were considered statistically significant (** p < 0.01, *** p < 0.0001). (D) Parental smoking was associated with increased need of specialized treatments (i.e., resuscitation and/or assistance in breathing, treatment for hypoglycaemia, antibiotics, phototherapy and/or other types of intensive care) to the baby either during its birth, in the ward, or in the neonatal intensive care unit.
February 24, 2024 at 8:46 PM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
New publication! We analyzed parental cigarette smoking before and during pregnancy in a cohort of 21 472 pregnancies.

We found that partner's smoking habits both before and during pregnancy, were associated with the likelihood that the woman would continue to smoke during her pregnancy
The prevalences of women's and their partners' smoking behaviours and smoking cessation. (A) ‘Smoking status during pregnancy’ categories of women and partners in the N = 21 472 pregnancies. In 18.3% (n = 3937) of the pregnancies, the age of the partner was unknown. Smoking during pregnancy was most common in the youngest (≤ 20 years) women and their partners, as 58.4% and 60.7% had been smoking at some time point during the pregnancy, and 21.1% and 49.9% continued to smoke throughout the pregnancy, respectively. (B) the proportion of quitters and continued smokers among women and partners who had been smoking before the woman became pregnant. Compared to the partners, the pregnant women ceased smoking more frequently. Altogether, in 73.4% of the pregnancies, the women ceased smoking, whereas only 29.5% the partners gave up smoking. Smoking cessation was least prevalent among the youngest (≤ 20 years). Correlations in parental smoking and alcohol use in the multiple imputed data. Spearman rho correlation coefficients between women and their partners' smoking and alcohol use variables in the multiple imputed data with the item score level predictive mean matching method. Due to the multiple imputation, the n in every cell is 21 472. P-values less than multiple testing corrected alpha level (p < 0.0002) were considered statistically significant and are indicated in bold. Partners' smoking habits and alcohol use were associated with women's smoking during pregnancy. There were positive correlations between the smoking behaviour of women and their partners both before and during pregnancy (rs = 0.38  − 0.48), and weak positive correlations between partners' alcohol use before pregnancy and women's smoking before and during pregnancy (rs = 0.12  − 0.20).
February 24, 2024 at 8:44 PM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
Our main finding was that already moderate alcohol use was associated with low hippuric acid levels. Low hippuric acid levels were seen in the depression cohort and low hippuric acid levels correlated with depression symptoms
Biosynthesis of hippuric acid. Gut microbiota produces benzoic acid from phenolic compounds found in the diet. Liver then combines benzoic acid with glycine to produce hippuric acid. Decreased serum concentrations of both hippuric acid and glycine were observed to be associated with moderate-to-heavy alcohol use in the general-population cohort.
January 25, 2024 at 10:56 AM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
We used targeted LC-MS metabolite profiling method on samples from general population and a cohort of patients with depression.

Alcohol use was associated with alterations in metabolite levels. Some similar in both cohort, but also some differences were seen
Metabolites associated with self-reported alcohol use. Standardized β coefficients are shown (with 95% confidence intervals as dashed lines) for linear regression models between measured metabolites and self-reported alcohol use with negative (A) or positive (B) correlations. After correction for multiple testing, only correlations between self-reported alcohol use and chenodeoxycholic acid, hippuric acid and xanthosine can be viewed as significant (p-values below multiple testing adjusted α of 0.001). Other correlations should be considered as trends. Legend: GP, general population cohort; MDD, major depressive disorder cohort; β, standardized β coefficient from linear regression model; p, p-value from linear regression model; *, p-value < 0.001 (Bonferroni adjusted α level).
January 25, 2024 at 10:52 AM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
Erittäin onnistunut väitös kaiken kaikkiaan. Väittelijä pääsi loistamaan tiedoillaan, kun vastaväittäjä professori Terhi Piltonen johdatti katsoja alustuksellaan ja kysymyksillään raskaudenaikaisten altistusten kiinnostavaan maailmaan
Aloitusluento Raskaudenaikaiset altistukset Vastaväittäjä alustaa aihetta ennen kysymyksiä
December 8, 2023 at 10:40 PM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
The ESBRA series of scientific webinars continue on 15th of December!

2nd ESBRA webinar: Exploring Animal Models in Alcohol Research: From Addiction to Organ Damages

You can register for the webinar at u-picardie-fr.zoom.us/meeting/regi...
2nd ESBRA webinar: Exploring Animal Models in Alcohol Research: From Addiction to Organ Damages
November 28, 2023 at 5:37 PM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
New publication!

I was happy to be part of an effort to investigate how maternal microbiota modulates fetal intestine, brain and placenta.

We saw that changes in fetal gene expression were associated with microbiota associated metabolites, like TMAO & 5-AVAB.

doi.org/10.1186/s129...
Examples of associations between metabolites and gene expression in the fetal intestine and brain. Only one gene per metabolite is shown. Metabolite signal intensity (ion abundance) on the X-axis and gene expression (normalized counts) on the Y-axis. Each data point is the mean of the two fetuses from one dam. Red = GF; turquoise = SPF. Tentatively annotated metabolites are marked with “?”. R, RP column; H, HILIC column (positive/negative)(Description from the published article)
October 5, 2023 at 12:21 PM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
#HiSciSky I am a senior researcher in drug toxicology. I study how exposures (eg alcohol, drugs & food) change metabolomes and if metabolite profiles could be used to predict disease progression and treatment outcomes. My main method is metabolomics and I am also CEO of a metabolomics company Afekta
September 27, 2023 at 5:08 AM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
Day 2 was also informative with good discussions. Plans now done, we can expect new samples and exciting results to be shown in the next GA in six months.
September 27, 2023 at 3:54 AM
ollikarkkainen.bsky.social
General assembly of 3D-omics started today in NMBU, Ås, Norway. Interesting presentations on the progress in developing methods for investigation of intestinal host-microbiota interaction.

Dr. Topi Meuronen from Afekta presented our recent results related to metabolomics development

www.3domics.eu
September 25, 2023 at 7:14 PM