Researchers from Mayo Clinic and collaborators have described — for the first time — the prevalence of autoimmune diseases in the United States. The study found that autoimmune diseases occur more frequently in women and identified the main autoimmune diseases by prevalence, sex, and age. Researchers estimate that about 15 million people have one or more of 105 known autoimmune diseases. "Knowing the number of patients with an autoimmune disease in the United States is fundamental to assessing whether these diseases are increasing or decreasing over time and with treatment," says DeLisa Fairweather, Ph.D., vice president of translational research in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at Mayo Clinic in Florida and corresponding author of the study. "Although we are still in the early stages, this study can be a step towards improving care." Researchers at Mayo Clinic have discovered the 'fountain of youth' of the immune system. They found that some older people maintain a 'juvenile immunity,' a new term coined by Mayo researchers to describe a young immune system in people over 60 years of age. "We observed that these patients have very young immune systems despite being in the sixth and seventh decade of life," says Cornelia Weyand, M.D., Ph.D., rheumatologist and physician-scientist at Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic researchers have developed new tools to estimate a person's risk of developing Alzheimer's years before symptoms appear, as part of the Precure initiative, and to help clinicians identify patterns of brain activity linked to nine types of dementia, including Alzheimer's, through a single imaging study. The researchers also confirmed the accuracy of an FDA-approved blood test that can be used in memory clinics to diagnose the disease in patients with varying degrees of cognitive decline. Mayo Clinic researchers have created 'virtual clinical trials' that accelerate the discovery of therapies while reducing the time, cost, and risk of failed studies by combining advanced computer modeling with real-world patient data as part of the Precure and Genesis initiatives. Using one of these virtual clinical trials, they developed a new way to predict whether existing drugs could be repurposed to treat heart failure, one of the world's biggest healthcare challenges. Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered the 'molecular switch' that directs a small but powerful set of cells to decide whether to repair tissue or fight an infection, a finding that could guide the development of regenerative therapies for chronic lung diseases as part of Mayo Clinic's Genesis initiative. "We were surprised to find that these specialized cells cannot perform both functions at the same time," says Douglas Brownfield, Ph.D., lead author of the study. "Some are committed to rebuilding, while others focus on defense." Mayo Clinic doctors are now creating detailed maps of each patient's unique brain wave patterns to precisely identify where stimulation is most effective, overcoming the traditional 'one-size-fits-all' approach in treating epilepsy. "Reorganizing the neural network could take us beyond seizure control to actually curing epilepsy," says Nick Gregg, M.D., neurologist at Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic researchers found that adding another test, called molecular breast imaging (MBI), to a 3D mammogram more than doubled the ability to detect cancer in dense breast tissue. "Our research focuses on detecting the most lethal cancers, which can include fast-growing invasive tumors," says Carrie Hruska, Ph.D., professor of medical physics at Mayo Clinic and lead author of the study. "If we can detect them earlier, we can probably save more lives." Mayo Clinic researchers have discovered a new genetic biomarker that signals aggressive brain tumors. They found that when meningiomas — the most common type of brain tumor — show activity in a gene called telomerase reverse transcriptase (TERT), they tend to recur more quickly, even if they appear low-grade under the microscope. "High expression of TERT is strongly linked to faster disease progression," says Gelareh Zadeh, M.D., Ph.D., neurosurgeon at Mayo Clinic and lead author of the study. Mayo Clinic researchers discovered that injecting a patient's own stem cells, obtained from adipose tissue, into a vein before hemodialysis, a treatment for end-stage kidney disease, often helped prevent inflammation and vein narrowing. "This approach has the potential to improve outcomes in millions of patients with kidney failure, reduce healthcare costs, and guide new clinical guidelines for managing dialysis access if it is validated in larger clinical trials," says Sanjay Misra, M.D., interventional radiologist at Mayo Clinic. Mayo Clinic researchers discovered that a 'sugar coating' on cells could protect cells that are normally destroyed in type 1 diabetes. After identifying a sugar molecule that cancer cells use on their surface to hide from the immune system, Mayo Clinic researchers found that the same molecule could, over time, help in the treatment of type 1 diabetes, formerly known as juvenile diabetes. "One goal would be to provide transplantable cells without the need for immunosuppression," says Virginia Shapiro, Ph.D., researcher in immunology at Mayo Clinic.
