Autoimmune Disease
Your body's immune system protects you from disease and infection. But if you have an autoimmune disease, your immune system attacks itself by mistake. Autoimmune diseases can affect many parts of the body. These diseases tend to run in families. Women - particularly African-American, Hispanic-American, and Native-American women - have a higher risk for some autoimmune diseases. Most autoimmune diseases strike women more often than men, particularly affecting women of working age and during their childbearing years.
There are more than 80 types of autoimmune diseases, and some have similar symptoms. As a group, however, they afflict millions of Americans. This makes it hard for your health care provider to know if you really have one of these diseases, and if so, which one. Getting diagnosed can be frustrating and stressful. In many people, the first symptoms are being tired, muscle aches and low fever. Some examples are multiple sclerosis, type 1 diabetes mellitus, and rheumatoid arthritis.
Autoimmune diseases can each affect the body in different ways. For instance, the autoimmune reaction is directed against the brain in multiple sclerosis and against the gut in Crohn's disease. In other diseases, such as lupus (systemic lupus erythematosus), affected tissues and organs may vary among individuals with the same disease. Some of the most common types of autoimmune disorders include:| Systemic Autoimmune Diseases | Localized Autoimmune Diseases |
| Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and Juvenile RA (JRA) (joints; less commonly lung, skin) | Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (pancreas islets) |
| Lupus [Systemic Lupus Erythematosus] (skin, joints, kidneys, heart, brain, red blood cells, other) | Hashimoto's thyroiditis, Graves' disease (thyroid) |
| Scleroderma (skin, intestine, less commonly lung) | Celiac disease, Crohn's disease, Ulcerative colitis (GI tract) |
| Sjogren's syndrome (salivary glands, tear glands, joints) | Multiple sclerosis* |
| Goodpasture's syndrome (lungs, kidneys) | Addison's disease (adrenal) |
| Wegener's granulomatosis (blood vessels, sinuses, lungs, kidneys) | Primary biliary cirrhosis, Sclerosing cholangitis, Autoimmune hepatitis (liver) |
| Polymyalgia Rheumatica (large muscle groups) | Cell Arteritis (arteries of the head and neck) |
| Guillain-Barre syndrome (nervous system) |
* There is still some debate as to whether MS is an autoimmune disease
For a more complete list of autoimmune conditions, visit the Patient Information page of the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, Inc. (Sources: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, 2007. American Association for Clinical Chemistry: Lab Tests on Line, 2007)
