This text has been translated from Norwegian with the assistance of GPT UiO
– Which research project are you most preoccupied with?
– At the moment, I’m working on publishing the results from our previous large projects. Among other things, we are finding intriguing sex differences in how stress affects the motivation to take strong painkillers – a mechanism that may help explain sex differences in substance misuse, where men are overrepresented. At the same time, we are at the starting line with several new large projects: Project Knockout, Decode, and Titrate.
– What are you hoping to find out?
– Much of what we do is about highlighting how differently people respond to strong painkillers, and examining the basis for how these medicines are used in healthcare. Alarmingly often, it is custom and habit – not research – that underpins current practice. Since strong painkillers are used so frequently (for example, in virtually all of the 500,000 operations carried out in Norway each year), the consequences of incorrect use can be serious for both individuals and society.
– Why is this important?
– Strong painkillers are given to millions of people around the world every day – they have both powerful benefits and serious side effects: everything from vomiting to severe constipation, addiction, and death due to respiratory failure. It is important for society that they are used correctly, so that we achieve maximum benefit and minimal risk for patients and their families.
– Who do you collaborate with?
– We have now grown into a larger research group here in Oslo, spread across UiO, OUS, Kongsberg Hospital and Kristiania, and I really enjoy working with so many talented and lovely people.
- More on the group at Affective Brains and NorOp (Norway Operations and Opioids Study).
– What do you look for when choosing collaborators?
– Nice people with “intellectual gunpowder” – that is, a playful and curious approach to the subject matter – and of course expertise that I don’t have. It is genuinely wonderful to work with clinicians: the nurses and doctors in our team very often have perspectives that give rise to new ideas, and they make sure that what we do is relevant in the real world.
– Who is your research relevant for outside academia, and what do you do to ensure they benefit from it?
– Both the basic researchers and the clinicians in our group work to translate insights from research into clinical practice, and we have several examples of changed practice following our talks and input.
– Do you have any examples of the research being used outside academia?
– Among other things, we are finding that strong painkillers are often used to help people relax before surgery, but that for most people they mainly cause intoxication and dizziness, and many experience their use as unpleasant. We can see that this knowledge is changing clinical practice. Previously, patients have not been asked about effects other than pain relief, and so we have not known about the whole host of other – potentially unpleasant – effects.
– What other research projects are you involved in?
– We have several large projects underway, including a mechanistic one in collaboration with preclinical and more basic researchers in biology and chemistry (Decode), and a very clinical project where we want to combine the best of clinical practice with research and, of course, carry out N-of-1 trials. That means we test whether a treatment works for each individual patient, rather than only at the group level.
– What do you find most interesting about being a researcher?
– I love collaborating with colleagues and understanding how things fit together – both are central to my work.
- Read also about the project SpectrO, for which Leknes received an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2024.