Katherine M. Poehlmann

Dr. Poehlmann’s 2002 book, Rheumatoid Arthritis: The Infection Connection, was a finalist for health book of the year, competing with the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins. She and Karl decided to donate proceeds from book sales and speaker fees to infection research.

In 2010 the Poehlmanns attended a conference hosted by the Institute for Functional Medicine where the plenary speaker was Dr. Garth Nicolson, one of the expert reviewers of Katherine’s book. Dr. Nicolson encouraged her to update the book since the number of autoimmune diseases (including RA and Juvenile RA) had increased from 59 in 2002 to 109, with Autism Spectrum Disorders and COPD recently added to the list.

Karl and Katherine spent over a year intensively researching, writing, and publishing Arthritis and Autoimmune Disease: The Infection Connection in 2012. There is about 30% overlap with the 2002 book in order to provide background information on how the immune system works and how chronic infections develop.

The authors were gratified that after ten years the scientific principles presented in the 2002 book have been proven correct by medical studies and have been helpful to many readers, as evidenced by five-star Amazon reviews.

This new book, with its expanded scope, was a finalist for the prestigious Eric Hoffer award for independently published books.

The Poehlmanns made a conscious decision not to include the 1000+ footnotes in the new 500 page book. Instead, those supportive citations are found on the their website, www. RA-Infection-Connection.com. On this site they present dozens of free health articles and findings from their ongoing research. Also on the website are the 2012 book’s table of contents, index, expanded bibliography, and tables of active links to useful health resources and to nutrition research summaries.

Based on what they discovered in researching the new book, the Poehlmanns are planning a third book dealing with infection-caused inflammation associated with Alzheimer’s Disease.