Immunology

How often do you stop and think about your immune system? If you live with one of the more than 80 immune-mediated diseases, you probably think about it more than most.

Immune-mediated diseases are chronic and can have a significant impact on a person’s quality of life due to potential physical, emotional and psychological burdens. Today, around four percent of people in the world live with an immune-mediated disease.

Even with the current treatment options that are available to treat many immune-mediated diseases, there is still a significant unmet need for people living with these diseases. That is why we aspire to deliver innovative medicines that enable breakthrough outcomes to address the unresolved impact of immune-mediated diseases.

Lilly has been able to provide immunology treatments to more than 1.5 million people around the world, but there are many more in need. That’s what motivates us to continue to find the next generation of treatments.

Understanding the Impact of Immune-mediated Diseases

Your immune system is a complex network of cells, tissues and organs that help fight infections and disease. It’s an incredibly important job. When that system isn’t working properly, it impacts the way the body responds to these threats, and this systemic dysfunction is what causes immune-mediated diseases.

When you live with an immune-mediated disease, you can experience joint pain, muscle weakness, skin disorders and fatigue. Additionally, immune-mediated diseases can affect almost any organ system in the body. But these diseases can also have a broader impact—causing emotional, psychological, and even financial challenges.

In the more severe cases, these diseases can also cause serious disability and reduced life expectancy. Some immune-mediated diseases may impact certain communities more often, like women and people of color.

For far too many, the unresolved impact of living with an immune-mediated disease often leads to a life with unwanted compromise. People deserve effective, safe and accessible treatments that allow them to live with less compromise. That’s our focus: provide more options that allow people suffering from immune-mediated diseases to live better lives in areas such as psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and gastrointestinal disorders.