SSF: Upswing in Diagnosis of Men and Children

It seems that so often I'm writing posts in which the tone of my message is frustration at the lack of research and education about our disease, so I am glad to have a chance to share a bit of positive news regarding Sjogren's awareness. Read this Q and A written by Frederick B. Vivino, MD, MS, FACR and found on the Sjogren's Syndrome Foundation "Conquering Sjogren's" blog.

Thank you for all of your years of hard work, Dr. Vivino. We are all benefiting from your dedication!

Is there any speculation as to what’s driving this big upswing in the diagnosis of men and children with Sjögren’s?

My gut feeling is that it has to do with the improvements in awareness and medical and dental education in recent years. The Sjögren’s Syndrome Foundation (SSF) has spent years trying to train the physicians and nurse practitioners about how prevalent and serious the disease is. We finally have a celebrity who unfortunately was diagnosed with Sjögren’s and although nobody likes to see somebody become ill, it has done a lot to help the entire public realize how serious it is, particularly the idea that people look a lot better than they feel and that it may take years to diagnose it unless you take the symptoms seriously.

I can tell you at the University of Pennsylvania, where I work, the oldest medical school in the United States, we only started giving our first Sjögren’s lecture to the first year medical students about four years ago. And that was only after years of me fighting with the curriculum committee to get it included in the rheumatology course for the first year students. So, we’ve made a lot of progress and I think that’s an example of the benefits of all this work.
-Frederick B. Vivino, MD, MS, FACR