Epidemiology of sarcoidosis and systemic lupus erythematosus – Team Elizabeth Arkema

Our overarching goal is to better understand the causes and consequences of sarcoidosis and lupus. Our mission is to provide evidence-based answers to etiological and clinical questions using epidemiological methods.

Part of the:

Our goal and mission

Our overarching goal is to better understand the causes and consequences of sarcoidosis and lupus. Specifically, our aims are to:

  • Identify risk factors for sarcoidosis and lupus
  • Reduce the time from symptoms to diagnosis
  • Improve treatment strategies for sarcoidosis and lupus
  • Minimize the long-term consequences of sarcoidosis and lupus

Our mission is to provide evidence-based answers to etiological and clinical questions using epidemiological methods.

About our research

We use contemporary Swedish population-based register data to better understand the demographic, clinical and lifestyle factors which drive increased risks of outcomes related to chronic inflammatory diseases, in particular, lupus and sarcoidosis. Our work focuses on quantifying risks so that care for people with lupus and sarcoidoisis can be improved.

Sweden’s high quality and comprehensive healthcare data allow us to conduct large-scale investigations of risk factors for and outcomes after sarcoidosis and lupus. These nationwide data from health and demographic registers form the basis of our data repository for research. It is further enriched by the inclusion of clinical and laboratory data from hospital-based registers.

Publications

Selected publications

Funding

Grants

  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2023 - 31 December 2025
    Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease in which granulomas form in any part of the body, most often affecting the lungs and lymph nodes. The disease varies among patients in terms of onset, severity and prognosis. A major obstacle in identifying causes of sarcoidosis is the inability to distinguish between different groups of patients. Inflammatory biomarker levels in combination with genetics can be used to better characterize and treat patients.My goal is to identify subgroups of sarcoidosis patients using genetic and proteomic data and determine whether these are associated with sarcoidosis prognosis. I will achieve this goal by collecting proteogenomic data from several sources of cases and controls. First, I will examine the relationship between genetics and inflammatory proteins in sarcoidosis patients. Then I will investigate whether there are clusters of patients with similar characteristics (endotypes) using a data-driven approach. To determine whether these subgroups are clinically meaningful, we will examine whether the risk of poor prognosis is different between the endotypes.The proposed project will be the first of its kind and will reveal important mechanisms of sarcoidosis pathogenesis. The use of genetics and proteomics from pre-clinical and newly diagnosed patients will be used to set the foundation for developing non-invasive biomarkers for diagnosis and endotype-specific treatment of sarcoidosis.
  • Swedish Cancer Society
    1 January 2021
    Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease that primarily affects the lungs, but other organs can also be affected. Sweden has the highest incidence of sarcoid in the world with 1100 new diagnoses per year. The disease has a significant negative impact on the quality of life and reduces life expectancy. Previous research suggests that sarcoid is linked to cancer because they share a defective immune system. Sarcoidosis patients are more often affected by cancer, moreover, sarcoidosis usually occurs after treatment in cancer patients. Knowledge of a link between sarcoid and cancer is limited because it is difficult to explore two diseases that are challenging to diagnose. We will combine large data sets from health data and quality registries with more detailed information from patient records. We will apply epidemiological methods to investigate whether sarcoid patients develop malignancy more frequently than the general population. In addition, we will investigate whether cancer patients are more often affected by sarcoid and whether the treatment affects the risk of developing sarcoid. Clinical information will be examined in detail from patients with both sarcoid and malignancy to validate the diagnoses with the goal of reducing misclassifications of sarcoid and malignancy, respectively, in the future. Our results will lead to new fundamental knowledge. This knowledge is necessary to improve our strategy for diagnosing and treating both sarcoid and cancer. Our research will lead to better understanding of how sarcoid and malignancy are related to each other. We want to identify factors that make it easier to distinguish between malignancy and sarcoid, so that unnecessary treatments and tests can be avoided.
  • Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation
    1 January 2021 - 31 December 2023
  • Swedish Research Council
    1 January 2018 - 31 December 2021

Our work is supported by grants from, among others:

  • Swedish Research Council
  • Swedish Heart-Lung Foundation
  • National Institutes of Health
  • Swedish Society for Medicine
  • Strategic Research Area in Epidemiology (SFO Epi)
  • Ingegerd Johansson Foundation
  • Karolinska Institutet Research Foundation

Staff and contact

Group leader

All members of the group


Statistician

Annica Dominicus

Collaboration

Our work brings together the expertise of clinicians, immunologists and epidemiologists. Collaborations are essential for the exchange of expertise from all scientific fields and we welcome researchers interested in chronic inflammatory disease research to contact us.

Keywords:
Autoimmunity and Inflammation Epidemiology Public Health, Global Health and Social Medicine Rheumatology Sarcoidosis
Content reviewer:
Elizabeth Arkema
04-09-2025