The Science
When the immune system is dysregulated it can start attacking your own body in a process called autoimmunity. This can have devastating consequences and often there is no cure, only a mitigation of symptoms. One such autoimmune disease is the rare disease Scleroderma, a connective tissue disease affecting the tissue in the skin, around internal organs, and blood vessels. Often this can lead to severe and life-threatening problems. One symptom associated with Scleroderma is the curling of fingers, making them claw-like. There is still little known about the disease and currently there is no cure. Many autoimmune disease patients additionally suffer from more than one disease. Much research is still needed to shed light on Scleroderma.
People suffering from autoimmune diseases struggle every single day. Their lives are often structured around their diseases, affecting quality of life, work, leisure activities, family, and relationships. The curling of fingers caused by Scleroderma is extremely painful and makes the fingers less or even unfunctional. When we think for a moment about the importance of our hands - be it to feel, touch, preparing food, or writing a sentence - we can appreciate how devastating the loss of hand function is.
As a vascular scientist and sufferer of autoimmune diseases, I wanted to use this opportunity to raise awareness about Scleroderma and acknowledge the many fantastic organisations that work on raising awareness and funding for Scleroderma research. One of those is the Charity Scleroderma & Raynaud's UK (SRUK; https://www.sruk.co.uk), which helped me understand this disease.
To create this piece “Autoimmunity”, white gel pen on black watercolour paper were used. The inversion of the conventional colour-scheme of dark-on-light to light-on-dark was used to highlight how much life can feel turned upside down when becoming ill.
The Artist
Dr. Elisabeth Kugler is a scientist who has worked internationally with image-based data for several years and has always been enthralled by science and art (read more: https://www.elisabethkugler.com). Being an established researcher in the fields of biomedical image analysis and blood vessel biology, Elisabeth has published work in several peer-reviewed scientific journals. In recent years she has focused on science communication and visual science art. She has now launched her company "Zeeks - Art for Geeks" to focus on this. Her artwork has been exhibited, shown on prestigious scientific journal covers, community websites, research centres, and on social media. As someone affected by autoimmune diseases, she uses her social media presence to raise awareness about rare diseases, particularly Scleroderma.
Twitter: https://twitter.com/KuglerElisabeth
Copyright statement. This work is published under the CC BY-NC-SA license