Autoimmune diseases can affect anyone.

One job of your immune system is to protect your body from germs… viruses, bacteria, and other living organisms.

Your immune system has the ability to tell the difference between what’s you and what’s foreign. A flaw can make your body unable to tell the difference between what’s you and what’s not you.

The immune system usually does not react against your body’s own cells, but sometimes it attacks the cells it is supposed to protect. This response is called autoimmunity.

Researchers think certain bacteria, viruses, toxins, and drugs trigger an autoimmune response in people who are genetically susceptible to developing an autoimmune disease. The body parts that are affected depend on the type of autoimmune disease. There are more than 80 known types of autoimmune diseases.

Autoimmune diseases are common, affecting more than 23.5 million Americans. Autoimmune diseases are a leading cause of death and disability, yet some autoimmune diseases are rare, while others, such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, affect many people.

Certain people are at greater risk for autoimmune disease, including:

• Women of childbearing age – More women than men have autoimmune diseases, which often start during their childbearing years.
• People with a family history – Some autoimmune diseases run in families, such as lupus and multiple sclerosis. It is also common for different types of autoimmune diseases to affect different members of a single family. Inheriting certain genes can make it more likely to get an autoimmune disease, but a combination of genes and other factors may trigger the disease to start.
• People who are around certain things in the environment – Certain events or environmental exposures may cause some autoimmune diseases, or make them worse. Sunlight, chemicals called solvents, and viral and bacterial infections are linked to many autoimmune diseases.
• People of certain races or ethnic backgrounds – Some autoimmune diseases are more common or more severely affect certain groups of people more than others. Type 1 diabetes is more common in white people, and lupus is most severe for African-American and Hispanic people.

Some Types of Autoimmune Diseases

• Alopecia areata
• Antiphospholipid antibody syndrome (aPL)
• Autoimmune hepatitis
• Celiac disease
• Diabetes type 1
• Graves’ disease
• Guillain-Barre syndrome
• Hashimoto’s disease
• Hemolytic anemia
• Idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP)
• Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD)
• Inflammatory myopathies
• Multiple sclerosis (MS)
• Myasthenia gravis (MG)
• Primary biliary cirrhosis
• Psoriasis
• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Scleroderma
• Sjögren’s syndrome
• Systemic lupus erythematosus
• Vitiligo

Source: digestive.niddk.nih.gov – April 2008