Autoimmune Life Blog

Matt Dufort, PhD, fights diabetes one data point at a time. Matt is a bioinformatician at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI), where he’s been using his data wrangling and analysis skills to find ways to prevent pancreatic damage in people living with type 1 diabetes (T1D).

Making the choice to have a baby can be complicated for any prospective parent. When you have an autoimmune disease, that decision can seem even more complex. You may wonder how pregnancy will impact your disease, and whether your disease will affect your baby.

What is the difference between an individual whose pancreas will continue producing insulin for 50 years, versus someone whose body may suddenly stop generating it within the next 18 months? That is the question Cate Speake, PhD, spends her days trying to answer.

Cameron Auxer knows chronic disease. She’s lived with it all her life, from asthma and osteoarthritis to chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) and fibromuscular dysplasia (FMD).

Author and poet Suzanne Edison’s work springs from her personal experience as the parent of a child with a rare autoimmune disease.

Managing your autoimmune disease may require quick and easy access to a bathroom, checking your blood sugar in public, finding a step-free route into a store, or knowing that safe foods will be on the menu.

In 2016, two of BRI's information technology experts Garrett Wright and Tom Skillman had a conversation that sparked a novel question: Could virtual reality (VR) headsets let scientists step inside cells and view them in greater detail than ever before? 

Veterans and military members, especially women of color, are more likely to have lupus than the general public — possibly because they’re exposed to toxic chemicals, stress and PTSD. That’s why the U.S.

Megan and Madeline Coder are twins who do everything together — like ballet and even raising sheep in their hometown, Battle Ground, Washington. But in the fall of 2014, when Megan was nine, she learned she had something that Madeline didn’t: type 1 diabetes (T1D).

My son Peter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 2013, just a few days before his third birthday. The years since have been a trial-by-fire learning experience.