[spondylosaurus]

Hey, fellow IBD/autoimmune sufferer here!

By chance, have you seen a rheumatologist? I got diagnosed with spondylitis first and Crohn's second, so I took the rheumatologist > gastroenterologist path, and a rheumatologist sort of does what you describe about systemic immune monitoring.

Not perfectly, to be fair. And rheumatology is a criminally overlooked and understaffed specialty. But my rheumatologist has been really good at helping me tie together various issues that seemed unrelated but actually shared a root cause. And, immune problems being what they are, I'd wager most of his patients are in a similar boat, so the whole "let's figure out why your guts are bad AND your joints hurt AND your skin is awful AND... etc" thing is business as usual on his end.

[doingtheiroming]

I've never seen a rhematologist. It does feel like the specialism that's closest to immunology. My docs always ask about joint pain and there's certainly overlap between arthritis and other inflammatory diseases like UC. My grandmother had terrible arthritis and as it tends to be more common in women, it seems likely that's the reason rheumatology in general is overlooked and understaffed. Biologics like Infliximab started out as arthritis treatements and were re-purposed as IBD treatmetns (generally more useful for UC than Crohns).

A friend who was recently diagnosed with UC (but with many other obviously AI symptoms / conditions) has managed to get himself referred to a Rheumatologist which is almost certainly a good thing.

But regardless of how good a rheumatologist might be at dealing with it, it isn't a fix for the issue that the immune system isn't treated as a first class citizen in medicine.