Sjögren’s Syndrome News

For generations, it has been a dream of oncologists to harness the immune system to defeat cancer. William B. Coley, MD, an innovative cancer surgeon of the late 19th century, recognized the likelihood for regression of head and neck cancers when the immune system was stimulated by certain infections.

Immune checkpoint inhibitors have been in heavy use in major cancer centers for more than a decade. These drugs are now used for several malignancies. It has been established, somewhat anecdotally, that these are associated with myiad rheumatic complications. While larger, more comprehensive and more rigorous data sets are beginning to emerge, questions remain.

Precision medicine is rapidly racing forward and, for those of us who are watching, it may be reasonable to ask “What will this mean for me?” The most obvious question might be whether we should seek to be early adopters or lay low and wait for the dust to settle.

The NIH recently commissioned $55 million for studies to investigate precision medicine. While it remains to be seen how many of those dollars will be used in rheumatic diseases, the message is clear: Medicine is moving steadily toward personalized approaches.

Researchers from the University of Toronto developed a new questionnaire to more accurately screen for rheumatic disease in the outpatient setting.

Using a methodology consistent with previous ACR and EULAR criteria, an international group of researchers developed and validated a new set of classification criteria for primary Sjögren’s syndrome, which was then approved by the ACR and EULAR.

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and the Lupus Foundation of America released a report that showed biopharmaceutical research companies in the United States have 311 medicines and vaccines in clinical trials or pending review by the FDA for patients with autoimmune disease.

Patients with primary Sjögren’s syndrome with positive autoantibodies demonstrated a low ankle-brachial index, which likely represents a higher chance for early atherosclerosis, according to recently published results.

There is a well-established body of evidence cataloguing the co-occurrence of autoimmune disorders. Patients with rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, autoimmune thyroiditis, Sjögren’s syndrome or a host of other such conditions carry a substantially increased risk for another autoimmune disease. Although some pairings are reported more frequently than others, the likelihood that a patient with any autoimmune disorder will ultimately acquire another autoimmune disorder is high. The question, then, is why.

In the Cover Story of this issue of Healio Rheumatology, we explore comorbid autoimmunity. We ask complex questions that basically come down to this: What does the presence or absence of such disorders tell us in terms of the nature of autoimmune and possibly autoinflammatory disease?