Director's Message
Welcome to the Lupus Program’s website. The Lupus Program hopes to help people with lupus live fuller and more rewarding lives so that we can better understand the disease, diagnose patients earlier, use more effective therapies with fewer side effects to treat patients and ultimately find a cure. We thank you for your interest and want to share our vision to improve care for patients with lupus by improving clinical outcomes, developing, and testing new treatment strategies and working toward a cure for lupus.
Our Goals
Our five goals to decrease morbidity and mortality from lupus and to develop new therapies to treat this disease for all patients who suffer from this disease are:
- Develop clinical research program to understand and improve outcomes in patients with lupus.
- Provide outstanding multi-disciplinary clinical care for patients with lupus including new treatment options.
- Train the next generation of young clinicians to provide state of the art and innovative care for patients with lupus.
- Prepare the next generation of young investigators to continue the drive towards a cure for lupus.
- Collaborate with basic scientists to uncover the causes of lupus.
- Partner with community organizations and clinics to reduce health disparities in lupus.
Advances in Lupus
Many of our discoveries represent advances which stand as a testament to the quality and dedication of our program, faculty, trainees, and staff are:
- Demonstrate the increased risk of fractures in patients with lupus
- Show that young African-American women with lupus have the same risk of osteoporosis as Caucasian women
- Indicate a possible link between bone deterioration and cardiovascular disease in lupus
- Discover that African-American women with lupus have the same risk of having abnormal imaging in blood vessels as Caucasian women, which indicates an increased risk of cardiovascular disease
- Refine risk estimates for cancer risk in lupus patients
- Collaborate with investigators to identify genes that may increase the risk of developing renal disease and those that may go on to develop end-stage renal failure
- Perform physical activity assessments as a first step to understanding the multiple factors contributing to fatigue experienced by patients with lupus
- Document for the first time that abnormalities in imaging the carotid blood vessels in lupus patients predicts their future risk of developing a stroke or heart attack
Please explore our website and our newsletters.
I hope that the information on this website is helpful to you. I would enjoy hearing from you about your own work and your feedback about ours. Please contact us with any questions or feedback you may have.
Sincerely yours,
