Thursday, 8 August 2019

Need to know about autoimmune diseases.

Need to know about autoimmune diseases


Immune system disorders cause abnormally low activity or over activity of the immune system. In cases of immune system over activity, the body attacks and damages its own tissues (autoimmune diseases). Immune deficiency diseases decrease the body's ability to fight invaders, causing vulnerability to infections. In response to an unknown trigger, the immune system may begin producing antibodies that instead of fighting infections, attack the body's own tissues. It's very important to understand what causes these diseases to be so much more common among women.

Autoimmunity causes more than 80 different diseases, their symptoms varying widely depending on the tissues affected. According to the National Institutes of Health, approximately five to eight percent of the U.S. population, the majority being women, suffers from an autoimmune disorder.

Women are less susceptible to infectious diseases than men, but are more often prone to autoimmune diseases. This higher prevalence is partly attributable to the X chromosome, which has many genes relating to the immune system. It is advantageous for women to have two X chromosomes, but the price is a greater tendency to develop autoimmunity.

Autoimmune diseases include disorders like type 1 diabetes in which the immune system damages the insulin-producing cells in the pancreas, rheumatoid arthritis where the immune system harms the joints or Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which impairs the thyroid gland and, as a result, metabolism.

In serious cases, global immune suppressing drugs are used to restrain the body’s immune response, preventing it from doing further harm. Unfortunately, immunosuppressants render people more susceptible to infections.

IBBS researchers are taking measures to understand, on the molecular level, what goes wrong when the body’s defense system battles that which it is supposed to protect.




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