Sarcoidosis Awareness Day

This past August, I wasn’t the only one surprised to hear that Bernard Jeffrey McCullough, better known as actor-comedian Bernie Mac, had died. He was only fifty years old, seemingly in the prime of his life and career, what could have brought this on? Headlines first told of a week-long bout with pneumonia and it was later confirmed that the pneumonia was most likely brought on by complications of a little-known disease that affects both men and women usually between the ages of 20 and 40. Sarcoidosis is an inflammatory disease that can crop up in almost any organ in your body. While April celebrates National Sarcoidosis Month, October keeps the information flowing year round with Sarcoidosis Awareness Day, today, October 4, 2008.

Sarcoidosis causes the body’s immune system to work overtime but instead of overprotecting against disease and infection, your body starts to destroy itself by eating away at its own tissues. Clumps of cells called granulomas start to group together to fight and when an organ collects too many of these cell gangs, the organ can start to function improperly.  The most common organs affected by sarcoidosis are the lungs followed by the lymph nodes. However, most any organ or part of the body can contract the granulomas that progress into sarcoidosis including the liver, skin, sinuses, heart, brain, muscles, bones, salivary glands, the nervous system and the kidneys.

One of the reasons sarcoidosis isn’t widely known, especially in the United States, is because it seems to commonly affect African Americans—as high as 2 percent—and those of Scandinavian-European descent and research shows a higher rate of diagnosis within women.

The executive director of the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research, Debbie Durrer says about the American awareness, "It's a disease whose numbers are underestimated in this country”. Sarcoidosis has no cure and doctors and scientists aren’t sure what causes it but theorize that a number of factors can contribute to it. Some suggest that genetic predisposition, certain chemicals, bacteria or viruses can bring on the inflammation that triggers the disease.

The hope is that having a Sarcoidosis Awareness Day will continue to bring headlines to this disease and cause more of an effort to be made to extend research possibilities so answers can finally be found. For more information regarding sarcoidosis or to learn how to help, visit the National Sarcoidosis Friends. Being able to find a cure would be incredible but even being able to isolate the gene that causes the predisposition or being able to understand the triggers behind the immune system granulomas would be further steps in the best direction…hope.