Regent of the University of Minnesota

Autoimmune diseases as single entities may be rare, but collectively afflict tens of millions of Americans and disproportionately impact women. Moreover, autoimmune diseases tend to co-occur in a person and are linked to many age-related conditions. In general, autoimmune diseases are underdiagnosed and involve autoantibodies that appear decades before the disease onset. Some autoimmune diseases occur more frequently in Hispanics, like systemic lupus erythematosus. Using a multiplex assay of autoantibodies to detect subclinical and preclinical autoimmune diseases, we propose assessing their seroprevalence in the Hispanic population and investigating the autoantibody associations with various antibodies to infection and age-related conditions.