Jessica English, MD, MSCR

Medical University of South Carolina 

Mentor(s): Diane Kamen, MD, MSCR 

Project Title: Pregnancy Outcome Disparities Among Women with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus 

About the Researcher 

Jessica English, MD, MSCR, is an Assistant Professor in the Division of Rheumatology and Immunology at the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). She completed her medical school training at East Tennessee State University. She completed internal medicine residency and rheumatology fellowship at MUSC. She served a year as chief resident after completion of her residency and was also a chief rheumatology fellow in her final year. During her three-year rheumatology fellowship, she completed a master's degree in clinical research. She transitioned to faculty at MUSC in July 2024 to continue advancing her clinical research career and to spearhead the MUSC Reproductive Health in Autoimmunity clinic. Her long-term research goal is to improve maternal health and pregnancy outcomes for women diagnosed with SLE. She has a particular interest in the improvement of maternal health in Black women with SLE as they are disproportionately affected by both severe SLE and poor pregnancy outcomes. Ultimately, her experiences in clinical care, education, and research support her pursuit of a career in SLE clinical research. Each will be a component of her success and the proposed research will allow her the opportunity to continue building a career as an independent researcher in the health disparities of maternal health in SLE. 

Project Summary 

The proposed research is crucial as overall maternal health in the United States has been worsening and is recognized as a critical area of research by the NIH with its recent establishment of the Implementing a Maternal Health and Pregnancy Outcome Vision for Everyone (IMPROVE) initiative. Our research goal is to identify risks and improve maternal health equity in women with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) who have significantly worse pregnancy outcomes as compared to the general population. There are few published studies evaluating pregnancy outcomes both before and after a diagnosis of SLE in predominantly Black cohorts who are at highest risk. Our long-term goal is to improve pregnancy outcomes in women who are at risk for developing SLE. 

The overall objective for this research project is to determine the extent to which factors, such as blood autoantibodies, clinical symptoms, and exposures before a diagnosis of SLE influence pregnancy outcomes. Our preliminary data includes >600 women (>1700 pregnancies) and suggests a 46% decrease in live births and 210% increase in pre-eclampsia in women prior to their diagnosis of SLE. Utilizing a large cohort of predominantly Black participants (80%), SLE and controls, followed for >20 years at our center, we will determine the extent to which these factors are related to pregnancy outcomes in the pre-SLE disease period (Aim 1). Aim 2 includes surveying and conducting interviews with women with SLE and controls evaluating differences in maternal health beliefs and experiences. The proposed research is innovative, in our opinion, as it changes focus to risks of adverse pregnancy outcomes in women even before a diagnosis of SLE. Study findings will have a positive impact on our ability to later build a model to help predict who may be at highest risk utilizing data from these aims. This provides new opportunities for early pregnancy screening methods to improve outcomes in women with SLE and SLE-associated autoimmunity.