Autoimmune Life Blog

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.

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.

A day prior to her 51st birthday last year, Aline Keller fell in the shower. “Within one week I had so much pain and swelling in my hands and joints that I could barely walk,” she says.

We all know you can give blood to help ill or injured people who need it, but did you know you can also donate blood for research?

For most people, the onset of type 1 diabetes (T1D) seems to occur suddenly, often resulting in a trip to the emergency room with life-threatening complications.

Benaroya Research Institute (BRI) and Seattle Children’s Research Institute (SCRI) are pioneering the use of gene editing techniques in efforts to control type 1 diabetes (T1D).

In March of 2015, 13-year-old Lizzie Blockhus experienced a week of being very tired and not feeling well. “I woke up in the middle of night and was dying of thirst,” she explains. “Then I was at my sister’s soccer game, dying of thirst again and I knew something wasn’t right.

This research update is on a variety of studies that BRI is conducting or collaborating on with other institutions. They are tackling various scientific and immunologic questions that explore innovative ways to fight MS from the lab to clinical studies.

Forty-year-old Cheryl Hile runs marathons, bicycles and holds a demanding full-time job—impressive accomplishments but, on the surface, not especially remarkable in this day and age.