Autoimmune Life Blog

Lori Carter is a national sales manager, a personal health coach, a wife and a mom. Her life was moving a million miles an hour before she was diagnosed with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), a chronic, systemic autoimmune disease, in April of 2013.

Lauren Lippincott is not yet 35 years old, yet she lives with five autoimmune diseases. She’s not alone. About 25 percent of people with autoimmune diseases have a tendency to develop additional autoimmune diseases.

As people who are affected by lupus know, it is one of the most puzzling and complex autoimmune diseases, according to Benaroya Research Institute scientists and Virginia Mason clinical researchers. Diagnosis is difficult because it can affect all the systems of the body.

Researchers at Benaroya Research Institute at Virginia Mason (BRI) and Seattle Children’s Research Institute are making key progress in their quest for an immunotherapy that cures type 1 diabetes once and for all.

Three sisters, Jeanne, Marilyn and Carol Kleyn, all joined the early research project SERA and the follow-up TIP-RA study. Their mother Peggy Kleyn was diagnosed with RA around 76 years of age.

What does it mean when scientists say they want to “prevent” a disease?

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.

"If it wasn’t for the Murdock Trust helping us with essential pieces of equipment and new technology for over 30 years, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve our cutting-edge research advancements,” says BRI President Jane Buckner, MD.

One in four people in the United States grapple with allergies, asthma or both. For years, BRI has had its sights set on helping these patients breathe easier. And our efforts just got a huge and welcome boost.