List of Autoimmune diseases
Many diseases have an autoimmune component. In autoimmune disease, the immune system begins to attack your own tissue rather than foreign tissues. It’s not known why this occur in most cases, but autoimmune disorders occur more frequently in women than in men, by a ratio of three to one. Around 23.5 million Americans suffer from one of the 80 or more autoimmune diseases. Bacterial infections may trigger some types of autoimmune disease.

List of Autoimmune Diseases: Starts in Childhood?

A list of autoimmune diseases includes disorders that often occur in childhood, such as juvenile rheumatoid arthritis and Type I diabetes, previously called juvenile diabetes. Children do not outgrow these autoimmune disorders as they might outgrow other disorders.
List of Autoimmune Diseases

Some, such as celiac sprue, can affect either adults or children manifest mostly with gastrointestinal symptoms but can also cause skin and joint problems. Rheumatoid arthritis can also develop in adulthood.

Many autoimmune disorders affect both the skin and the joints, including systemic lupus erythematosus, scleroderma, Sjögren’s syndrome and psoriasis, best known for its scaly skin patches but also capable of causing joint inflammation. Vitiligo causes parts of the skin to lose pigment and hair to turn gray prematurely. Other diseases that affect some part of the skin include alopcia areata, which causes loss of patches of hair and can affect the whole head.

List of Autoimmune Diseases: Thyroid?

Many people do not realize that two common thyroid disorders are on the list of autoimmune diseases. Graves disease, the medical term for overactive thyroid and Hashimotos disease, the medical name for underactive thyroid, are both autoimmune disorders that occur more commonly in women than in men.

Muscle disorders also frequently make the list of autoimmiune disorders. Dermatomyositis, which causes muscle weakness along with a skin rash, affects mainly two age groups: children between ages 5 and 15 and adults, mostly women, between the ages of 40 and 60. Children may experience spontaneous resolution of this disorder, which can be severe enough to cause death from lung failure or pneumonia.

Better known muscle disorders associated with muscle weakness include multiple sclerosis and myasthenia gravis. In these disorders, the immune system attacks the nerves or the muscles. Addison’s disease, which can have an autoimmune factor, causes extreme weakness and fatigue. People who already have one autoimmune disease might have an increased risk of also developing Addison’s disease.

Some autoimmune diseases affect blood cells and can cause problems for pregnant women. Antiphospholipid antibody syndrome can causes repeated miscarriage in pregnant women as well as increase the risk of stroke, migraines and problems with blood clotting. Autoimmune thrombocytopenic purpura lowers the platelet count and can also cause difficulty in pregnancy, if the platelet levels drop low enough.

Several types of autoimmune disease attack the liver, autoimmune hepatitis and primary biliary sclerosis. These disorders can damage the liver to the point of requiring of liver transplant.

List of Autoimmune diseases continued

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