Junvenile Autoimmune Illnesses
More than 80 diseases occur as a result of the immune system attacking the body's own organs, tissues, and cells. Some of the more common autoimmune diseases include type 1 diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis,systemic lupus, and inflammatory bowel disease. A usual sign of an autoimmune disease is inflammation, which can cause redness, heat, pain, and swelling. How an autoimmune disease affects you depends on what part of the body is targeted. If the disease affects the joints, as in rheumatoid arthritis, you might have joint pain, stiffness, and loss of function. If it affects the thyroid, as in Graves’ disease and thyroiditis, it might cause tiredness, weight gain, and muscle aches. If it attacks the skin, as it does in scleroderma/systemic sclerosis, vitiligo, and systemic lupus erythematosus, it can cause rashes, blisters, and color changes.
No one is sure what causes autoimmune diseases. In most cases, a combination of factors is probably at work. For example, you might have a genetic tendency to develop a disease and then, under the right conditions, an outside invader like a virus might trigger it.
I know with us, they can't pinpoint one single factor, the list of diseases that fall into the autoimmune category includes:
- alopecia areata
- autoimmune hemolytic anemia
- autoimmune hepatitis
- dermatomyositis
- diabetes (type 1)
- some forms of juvenile idiopathic arthritis
- glomerulonephritis
- Graves’ disease
- Guillain-Barré syndrome
- idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura
- myasthenia gravis
- some forms of myocarditis
- multiple sclerosis
- pemphigus/pemphigoid
- pernicious anemia
- polyarteritis nodosa
- polymyositis
- primary biliary cirrhosis
- psoriasis
- rheumatoid arthritis
- scleroderma/systemic sclerosis
- Sjögren’s syndrome
- systemic lupus erythematosus
- some forms of thyroiditis
- some forms of uveitis
- vitiligo
- granulomatosis with polyangiitis (Wegener’s)
