Ole Magnus Bjørgaas Helle is a PhD candidate at Centre for International Health, within the Department of Global Health and Primary Care at UIB. He is a medical doctor and currently employed at the Department of Thoracic Medicine at Haukeland University Hospital. He has experience in tropical medicine from healthcare projects in Tanzania, Bolivia and working one year at Mnazi Mmoja Hospital in Zanzibar.

He is a member of the Tuberculosis Research Group at UIB and his research focuses on improving diagnosis and management of extrapulmonary tuberculosis in low-resource settings. His main work is on the validation of a new antigen detection test for the diagnosis of extrapulmonary tuberculosis in India and Pakistan. As part this research he has completed several research stays at collaborating partners at the R.D. Gardi Medical College in Ujjain, India.  

Doctoral dissertation

• Helle, Ole Magnus Bjørgaas (2025). Extrapulmonary tuberculosis - improving diagnosis and evaluating factors associated with hospitalization and mortality in high-burden areas. (external link)

Academic article

• Hassan, Shoaib; Yaesoubi, Reza; Helle, Ole Magnus Bjørgaas et al. (2025). Factors associated with the delay in diagnosis of extrapulmonary tuberculosis at the patient and health system level: A study from a rural setting in India. (external link)
• Helle, Ole Magnus Bjørgaas; Kanthali, Mala; Grønningen, Erlend et al. (2024). Factors associated with hospitalization and mortality in adult and pediatric extrapulmonary tuberculosis at a tertiary care hospital in Central India. (external link)
• Helle, Ole Magnus Bjørgaas; Kanthali, Mala; Ishtiaq, Sheeba et al. (2024). Diagnosing adult and pediatric extrapulmonary tuberculosis by MPT64 antigen detection with immunohistochemistry and immunocytochemistry using reproduced polyclonal antibodies. (external link)
• Helle, Ole Magnus Bjørgaas; Kanthali, Mala; Akhtar, Naish et al. (2023). Significance of non-granulomatous cytomorphology on fine needle aspirate in lymphadenitis cases classified as tuberculous by using a composite reference standard. (external link)

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

Helle OMB, Pedersen TH, Ousager LB, Thomassen M, Hertz JM. Low frequency of parental mosaicism in de novo COL4A5 mutations in X-linked Alport syndrome. Mol Genet Genomic Med. 2020 Oct;8(10):e1452. doi: 10.1002/mgg3.1452. Epub 2020 Aug 18. PMID: 32812400; PMCID: PMC7549549.