The power of genetics in decoding Sjögren’s disease: current status and future development

Abstract

Sjögren’s disease (SjD) is the second most common systemic autoimmune disease in the United States. SjD patients are predominantly women 30–50 years of age and exhibit heterogeneous clinical manifestations, including symptoms of extensive dryness, chronic fatigue, and joint pain, and various major organ involvement. Late onset, clinical heterogeneity, and limited mechanistic understanding of its etiology frequently lead to delayed or misdiagnosis. Although the etiology of SjD is unclear, candidate gene studies and population-based genome-wide association studies suggest that SjD results from an interplay between genetics and environment. Defining the genetic susceptibility of SjD remains an important research focus to improve the understanding of SjD etiology and the development of diagnostic and treatment options. Unfortunately, the genetic understanding of SjD lags far behind that of other related autoimmune diseases. This review provides a brief history of key milestones in the field of SjD genetics and highlights several areas of future research that will bolster the discovery power of ongoing genetic studies and define the underlying mechanisms that drive disease etiology.