Towards the Establishment of a Biomedical Ontology for the Primary Sjögren’s Syndrome

Primary Sjögren's Syndrome (pSS) has been characterized as a hypersensitivity reaction type II systemic autoimmune chronic disease causing exocrine gland dysfunction mainly affecting women near the menopausal age. pSS patients exhibit dryness of the main mucosal surfaces and are highly prone to lymphoma development. This paper presents a first biomedical ontology for pSS based on a reference model which was determined by pSS clinical experts. The ensuing ontology constitutes the fundamental basis for mapping pSS-related ontologies from international cohorts to a common ontology. The ontology mapping (i.e., schematic interlinking) procedure is, in fact, a preliminary step to harmonize heterogeneous medical data obtained from various cohorts.