Merete Lund Hetland

Merete Lund Hetland is a Clinical Professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine, University of Copenhagen, and serves as a Consultant in Rheumatology at Glostrup Hospital. She chairs the steering committee for the DANBIO registry and is affiliated with the Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences. Her work bridges clinical practice and academic research in rheumatology.

Education:

• Medical doctor (Cand. med.) from University of Copenhagen (1988)
• Specialized in rheumatology (2000)
• PhD from University of Copenhagen (1997)
• DMSc (Doctor Medicinae) from University of Copenhagen (2011)

Professor Hetland's research focuses on inflammatory joint diseases, particularly rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, and spondyloarthritis. Her work encompasses treatment strategies, predictors of disease progression, randomized controlled trials (RCTs), observational studies, biomarkers, and imaging techniques. She has made significant contributions to understanding disease epidemiology and treatment outcomes through registry-based research, particularly with the DANBIO registry which tracks patient outcomes in rheumatological conditions across Denmark.

Her recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on clinical decision-making for patients with inflammatory arthritis who have cancer history, metabolic aspects of rheumatoid arthritis, self-management interventions, immune checkpoint molecules, biomarker research in spondyloarthritis, and statistical methods for handling missing data in observational studies. These works reflect her commitment to improving treatment strategies through rigorous clinical research and registry data analysis.

With over 500 research outputs including 329 journal articles, 144 conference abstracts, and various other scholarly contributions, Professor Hetland has established herself as a leading researcher in rheumatology. Her work has been cited extensively and has influenced clinical practice guidelines in the field.

As Chair of the steering committee for the DANBIO registry, Professor Hetland leads one of Scandinavia's most comprehensive rheumatology registries, which has become an important resource for observational studies and post-marketing surveillance of biologic and targeted synthetic DMARDs.