What happens before chronic inflammatory disease becomes clinically visible?

Coordinators: A. Franke (CAU), W. Lieb (CAU)

Often, the chronic inflammatory disease process begins a relatively long time (years) before patients develop the first clinical symptoms and before a clinical diagnosis of CID is made. This gradual transition and its driving mechanisms from health to disease is still poorly understood.

RTF-XI tries to close this gap by following healthy people who are at increased risk of developing chronic inflammatory diseases as well as patients at very early stages of disease. We combine clinical observations with genetic and molecular analyses to identify changes that precede clinically overt disease and signatures that may predict how inflammation will progress.

Studying these early stages could reveal factors that trigger disease and provide opportunities for earlier detection or even prevention. Molecular analyses primarily focus on immunogenetic fingerprinting and microbiome analyses (in collaboration with the respective expert TIs and RTFs of PMI.