Aging and Sjögren’s Disease (SjD)

The primary goal of this project is to understand the mechanisms behind key clinical observations in Sjögren’s disease patients: the prominence of clinical symptoms at an older age and the possible role of elevated oxidative stress in the disease process. Understanding basic mechanisms linking aging with organ dysfunction in Sjögren’s disease will be essential in developing novel modalities to treat the disease. This project investigates dynamic changes in immune cell populations in the salivary glands of young and aged mice. Further, this project aims to understand how sex differences influence inflammatory responses in salivary glands.