Married scientists looking into autoimmune disease affecting older women

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) - Scientists in Oklahoma are studying an autoimmune disease that causes a painfully dry mouth and eyes. It can also eventually impact the ability to speak and eat.

The risk factor is higher, the older you are and they are searching for the answer as to why that’s the case.

Both Umesh Deshmukh and Harini Bagavand have spent almost 30 years in the lab together as a married couple.

"It's tremendous to be able to collaborate with your wife,” Deshmukh said.

They both admit there are caveats in science with your significant other.

“The thing about science is that critical thinking, criticism and honest opinions are very key,” Bagavand said.

"Arguments can switch from what we need to cook tonight to what experiment and what data we got,” Deshmukh said.

That hasn’t stopped them and their student team from a productive collaboration looking into Sjogren’s Disease. It’s an autoimmune disease where your immune system attacks your salivary glands and causes severely dry mouth and eyes.

"When you have dry mouth, you cannot speak, you cannot eat, you lose all your teeth so the social life of the patient becomes horrible,” Deshmukh said.

Deshmukh describes it as a constant feeling of sand in the eyes. Add in fatigue and joint pain to that as well. If a person rubs their eyes it can cause further damage. More than 300,000 Americans suffer from it.

"We are constantly making saliva,” Bagavand said.

Bagavand said the average person makes about one and a half to two liters of saliva in 24 hours. Someone with Sjogren’s only makes 50 milliliters. It’s difficult to diagnose and 9 out of 10 people that have it are women with an average age of 52. Umesh, his wife Harini and their team are on a quest to find out why with hopes to improve the lives of those that suffer with it.

"It takes a village or a whole community to develop a drug against any disease,” Deshmukh said.

Both Deshmukh and Bagavand feel it is under diagnosed. They also said they had to use mice that are relative to the age of a human in their study. A one or two year old mouse is the equivalent to someone between the ages of 40 and 60.