Michael Eriksen Benros

Michael Eriksen Benros

Clinical Professor

ORCID: 0000-0003-4939-9465

Michael Eriksen Benros is an expert in Immuno-Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, Epidemiology and Precision Psychiatry. He is professor at Department of Clinical Medicine at the University of Copenhagen, and head of Biological and Precision Psychiatry at Mental Health Centre Copenhagen, Copenhagen University Hospital.

He has been at the forefront of the emerging field of Immuno-Psychiatry and has helped advancing the field through several landmark papers highlighting the association between immune-related factors and mental illness utilizing Danish nationwide registers and biobanks, clinical studies and meta-analysis. His group’s meta-analysis has amongst other highlighted the potential treatment effects of immune modulating drugs for depression and psychotic disorders.

He now leads a sizable effort to disentangle the role of the immune system in the development of severe mental disorders, combining immune exposures from the nationwide Danish registers, with immunogenetic investigations, and novel research on cerebrospinal fluid and blood obtained from biobank and clinical studies of patients with psychotic and affective disorders also utilizing omics and systems biology approaches. Furthermore, he is heading the Precision Psychiatry Initiative utilizing systems biology and machine learning methods aiming at paving the way for more precise diagnostics and new treatment targets.

He is a board member of the Psychiatric Immunology Section of the World Psychiatric Association, co-PI on the DanFunD study, and has received a number of awards, including the prestigious Sapere Aude Research Leader award from the Independent Research Fond Denmark.

Selected publications

  1. Published

    COVID-19 pandemic and mental health consequences: Systematic review of the current evidence

    Vindegaard, N. & Benros, Michael Eriksen, 2020, In: Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 89, p. 531-542

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

  2. Autoimmune psychosis: an international consensus on an approach to the diagnosis and management of psychosis of suspected autoimmune origin

    Pollak, T. A., Lennox, B. R., Müller, S., Benros, M. E., Prüss, H., Tebartz van Elst, L., Klein, H., Steiner, J., Frodl, T., Bogerts, B., Tian, L., Groc, L., Hasan, A., Baune, B. T., Endres, D., Haroon, E., Yolken, R., Benedetti, F., Halaris, A., Meyer, J. H. & 8 others, Stassen, H., Leboyer, M., Fuchs, D., Otto, M., Brown, D. A., Vincent, A., Najjar, S. & Bechter, K., 2020, In: The Lancet Psychiatry. 7, 1, p. 93-108 16 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Review › Research › peer-review

  3. Published

    Infections of the central nervous system as a risk factor for mental disorders and cognitive impairment: A nationwide register-based study

    Pedersen, E. M. J., Köhler-Forsberg, O., Nordentoft, Merete, Christensen, R. H. B., Mortensen, P. B., Petersen, L. & Benros, Michael Eriksen, 2020, In: Brain, Behavior, and Immunity. 88, p. 668-674

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review

ID: 239501387