Rheumatic systemic diseases
Our team is researching etiology, comorbidities and prognosis of patients with rheumatic diseases, with a particular focus on systemic inflammatory diseases such as idiopathic inflammatory myopathies, systemic sclerosis, and small vessle vasculitidies. Our aim is to decrease our patients burden of disease and identify strategies that will prolong their lives.
Our current projects are clustered around three main areas:
- Biomarkers for specific clinical phenotypes. We are using genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics to understand pathways important in disease development, identify potential drug targets, and learn more about biomarkers that could predict outcomes.
- Cancer and the connection between cancer and autoimmunity/inflammation. We recently initiated a collaboration between Karolinska Institutet, Lund University and Oslo University, with projects where the overarching aim is to explore molecular pathways that could be of interest in cancer in inflammatory diseases. This project involves genetics, autoimmune profiling, proteomics and genomics in combination with information on clinical phenotype.
- Comorbidities and causes of death. These projects mainly explore the risk of other diseases in relation to myositis and systemic sclerosis as well as their causes of death, with the overarching aim to reduce the risk of these comorbidities and thereby potentially prolong their lives.