What is Living with Sarcoidosis?
Living with Sarcoidosis is a dedicated patient-to-patient support community for families affected by Sarcoidosis. Sarcoidosis Patients Support Community is powered by BensFriends.org, a network of patient support communities for rare diseases, and is run by volunteer moderators who have been affected with Sarcoidosis condition.
Who can join Living with Sarcoidosis?
If your family has been affected by Sarcoidosis, consider Living with Sarcoidosis your second home. Living with Sarcoidosis, as well as the rest of BensFriends.org’s patient communities, is free for members to join.
What is Sarcoidosis?
Sarcoidosis is a multisystem granulomatous disease of unknown etiology. Sarcoidosis coexisting with connective tissue diseases, once considered rare, complicates various such disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, systemic sclerosis, Sjögren’s syndrome, and the spondyloarthropathies.
Symptoms common to sarcoidosis and autoimmune disease include keratoconjunctivitis sicca, weight loss, fever, lymphadenopathy, pulmonary complaints, and cutaneous lesions. Consequently, the diagnosis of sarcoidosis in association with connective tissue disease is often difficult and may require biopsy of the lung, liver, skin, lymph node, muscle, or bone marrow for pathological confirmation.
Abnormalities of immune function as well as autoantibody production, including rheumatoid factor and antinuclear antibodies, are seen in sarcoidosis and in connective tissue diseases, suggesting a common immunopathogenic mechanism. The severity and course of sarcoidosis associated with autoimmune disease is variable. The incidence of sarcoidosis in association with rheumatic disease is underestimated if new symptoms of sarcoidosis are attributed to the primary rheumatic disease and a secondary diagnosis is not pursued.
What is BensFriends.org?
In 2007, Ben Muñoz suffered a rare form of stroke caused by an AVM. He was unable to find the support he needed during the most difficult time, so he created an online support community AVMSurvivors.org to connect with others like him. AVMSurvivors.org led to the founding of BensFriends.org, driven to provide patient-to-patient support communities for people living with rare diseases.
BensFriends.org is a network of patient communities for people living with rare diseases. Launched in November 2007, BensFriends.org provides valuable patient support by creating and running compassionate, responsive communities. BensFriends.org maintains dozens of patient communities and has changed thousands of lives.
You can learn more about BensFriends.org at http://www.bensfriends.org or watch one of our videos at http://www.youtube.com/BensFriendsVideos.