King Harald V of Norway, who is 89 and hospitalized with complications from a blood disease, saw his condition worsen over the weekend, the Norwegian royal palace announced.
Harald, Europe's oldest reigning monarch, has hemolytic anemia, a condition in which red blood cells are destroyed abnormally quickly. He has been hospitalized at the National Hospital in Oslo since last Monday.
The palace said in a statement that His Majesty the King's health condition had worsened over the weekend.
The palace added that the king was receiving antibiotics to fight a bacterial infection in his blood and was responding well to the treatment.
Decades on the throne
Harald ascended to the Norwegian throne in 1991. Norway is a constitutional monarchy, in which the king's duties are largely ceremonial. He has faced multiple health problems in recent years but has ruled out stepping down.
In recent days, members of his family, including his son and heir, Crown Prince Haakon, who serves as regent while the king is unwell, have visited his bedside at the hospital.
Royal family scandals
The king's latest health setback comes as the Norwegian royal family has faced a string of scandals in recent months, most involving Crown Princess Mette-Marit, who is married to Haakon.
The release of documents in the United States in late January revealed correspondence, at times intimate in tone, that Mette-Marit exchanged with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein between 2011 and 2014, after the American financier had already been convicted.
Mette-Marit has also had to contend with the legal troubles of her son, Marius Borg Høiby.
Son's rape conviction
Høiby, 29, was born from a relationship Mette-Marit had before she married Haakon in 2001. He was convicted in June and sentenced to four years in prison without suspension for two rapes and 32 other charges, including violence against a former partner. He has appealed the verdict.
Mette-Marit, 53, who herself suffers from an incurable lung disease, needed a lung transplant in July.
