Among its notable accomplishments, Autoimmune Registry (ARI) was cited in the National Academy of Sciences for its comprehensive list of autoimmune diseases and classification by level of evidence. ARI was also featured by the National Institute of Health's All of Us program for our work analyzing health-related data to better understand autoimmune diseases.

Many of us have heard that our autoimmune diseases put us at an increased risk for cancer, but what is the connection between cancer and autoimmune diseases?

One of the most commonly reported conditions by our registrants is fibromyalgia (fibro). This condition has long baffled physicians with unexplained pain and fatigue reported by patients. One study published in 2021 found evidence that fibro may be autoimmune.

We've long suspected a connection between the immune system and our gut. In fact, many of us with autoimmune diseases develop food sensitivities to foods like gluten and dairy.

Last time, we wrote about biologic treatment and asked about your experiences. We're publishing a few of the responses below, with names and dates removed to protect anonymity.

We've long known there is a genetic component to autoimmune diseases. But how did these genes evolve and why does it seem like more and more people are being diagnosed with autoimmune diseases today?

Alzheimer’s is the most familiar form of dementia. Although we are all familiar with autoimmune brain fog, scientists have not previously made the connection between Alzheimer's and autoimmune disease.

Previously, we wrote about long COVID being a suspected autoimmune disease. But there have also been reports of patients developing autoimmune diseases after they've recovered from COVID.

With a better understanding of our genomes, scientists have increasingly looked to personalized medicine or gene therapy to target diseases. Recently, gene therapy was used to effectively treat 5 lupus patients in a groundbreaking study.

Last week, we posted a Facebook poll results from our Multiple Autoimmune Syndrome group, providing the percentage of votes for each symptom.  In that email, we also shared a link to fill out a survey on diseases, symptoms, and medications, and the results are in!  With the survey, we can link the symptoms to individual survey IDs and their reported diseases.

One of the biggest struggles of managing an autoimmune disease is the irregular onset of flares.  With autoimmune diseases, we find that we can no longer rely on our bodies to function the way they did before.

There has been a lot of buzz around new, biologic treatments for autoimmune diseases, but what are they and how often are they actually being used?

Three years into the pandemic, scientists are still struggling to understand long COVID. Long COVID and autoimmune diseases share many similar symptoms. Some have hypothesized that long COVID is a type of autoimmune disease, but scientists have yet to find autoantibodies associated with long COVID and more study is needed.

While there are different types of autoimmune diseases, they all share the same mechanism of the immune system attacking its own body and cells. This creates an inflammatory response that is similar to what our body does when we have a cold or flu.

Many of those with autoimmune diseases tend to have more than 1. Why is it so common to have multiple autoimmune diseases? Scientists believe that there are likely shared genes and similar molecular mechanisms at play.

Autoimmune Registry (ARI) is spearheading the use of the All of Us platform to incorporate genome data into our data analysis.  Information on disease prevalence, coupled with lab test results, patient-reported symptoms, and genomic data will let us develop statistical models to predict autoimmune diseases and reduce the time to diagnosis.

Many people suffer from both diseases, but which one typically comes first?

Scientists researching a case of lupus in a 7-year-old girl discovered a genetic mutation that led to her disease.  This is important news, but what does it mean for people with other autoimmune diseases or even other people with lupus?

Many people ask: “Why group all autoimmune diseases together in one registry? There are over 100 autoimmune diseases, and most people have only one.” However, data show that people with one autoimmune disease often develop another autoimmune disease.  And sometimes these connections are unexpected.