Grant: Project Grant

The immune system normally protects us from infection. Still, sometimes it becomes too active and attacks normal tissue, causing chronic diseases like immune-related 'rheumatic' diseases (which are treated with immune-suppressing medications by 'rheumatology' doctors). Individuals with these conditions are often very sick, require a lot of physician care and hospitalizations, and even may die of complications. Examples of these conditions are systemic lupus (SLE, as well as other systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases, SARDs) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). It is not clear why some people are at risk for these conditions, but sometimes markers (called 'serology') of these diseases can be found in the blood even years before symptoms and diagnoses of these immune-related 'rheumatic' diseases. Our project will study factors in the environment (including air pollution, temperature-related factors, and humidity) to see if these are related to the risk of an individual developing markers of immune-related 'rheumatic' diseases and/or the disease themselves. To do this, we will use collected health data and examine how people have been exposed to air pollution, temperature-related factors, and humidity over the years. We will look at those who initially did not have immune-related 'rheumatic' diseases and see how many later developed these conditions. We will compare people exposed to higher levels of air pollution, temperature-related factors, and humidity to those with lower levels to see if these factors are associated with the risk of serology or the development of these immune-related 'rheumatic' diseases. This study will provide insights that could eventually help plan strategies to improve the health of Canadians, especially regarding the risk of immune-related 'rheumatic' diseases.