Autoimmune Life Blog

My son Peter was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes just before his third birthday. At the time, he was in the stretch run of potty training. Incentivised with M&M’s, Peter was using the toilet more and more frequently. He was also insatiably thirsty.

There are more than 1 million people affected with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in the United States — about equally distributed between ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease. However, the IBD “map” has changed substantially in the last half century throughout the world.

We started this blog to bring more awareness and understanding of autoimmune disease, which is so common, yet often so misunderstood. According to the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, only 13 percent of Americans can name one autoimmune disease!

Every day, more than 23 million Americans are affected by autoimmune disease. There are over 80 varieties, some of which you may have heard of: rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, celiac disease, type I diabetes, alopecia, thyroid disease, psoriasis, and multiple sclerosis.

BRI scientists are now discovering a new, exciting commonality between autoimmune diseases. This research points to an early event that drives the development of autoimmunity and which could be targeted by new therapies.

In the 1950s, when Jack Wimpress, a talented Boeing aerodynamics engineer, and his late wife, Doris, a dedicated nurse, began their family, they were a statistical anomaly. “Three out of four of our children developed type 1 diabetes,” says Jack. “Everyone told us that this wasn’t possible.”

Indigo Philo was a freshman in college when she began to get painful stomach cramps and an overwhelming sense of urgency to go to the bathroom.

The National Institutes of Health recently awarded BRI an $8 million grant to lead the center—a collaboration of researchers from BRI, UW Medicine and Seattle Children’s Research Institute.

Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) is waging a comprehensive fight against rheumatoid arthritis (RA). “During the last 15 years, treatments for RA have improved enormously with new therapies,” says BRI President Jane Buckner, MD, who is leading this work.