Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
This article provides a list of autoimmune diseases. These conditions, where the body's immune system mistakenly attacks its own cells, affect a range of organs and systems within the body. Each disorder is listed with the primary organ or body part that it affects and the associated autoantibodies that are typically found in people diagnosed ...
Some women with autoimmune diseases may have problems getting pregnant. This can happen for many reasons such as medication types or even disease types. [59] Tests can tell if fertility problems are caused by an autoimmune disease or an unrelated reason. Fertility treatments are able to help some women with autoimmune disease become pregnant. [2]
The specific role that fetal cells play in microchimerism related to certain autoimmune diseases is not fully understood. However, one hypothesis states that these cells supply antigens, causing inflammation and triggering the release of different foreign antigens. [39] This would trigger autoimmune disease instead of serving as a therapeutic.
For example, some autoimmune diseases tend to flare during pregnancy (possibly as an evolutionary mechanism to increase health protection for the child), [50] when hormone levels are high, and improve after menopause, when hormone levels decrease. Women may also naturally have autoimmune disease trigger events in puberty and pregnancy. [48]
The fetal immune cells in the maternal thyroid gland may become activated and act as a trigger that may initiate or exaggerate the autoimmune thyroid disease. In Hashimoto's disease patients, fetal microchimeric cells were detected in thyroid in significantly higher numbers than in healthy females.
Most autoimmune diseases are sex-related; as a whole, women are much more likely to develop autoimmune disease than men. Being female is the single greatest risk factor for developing autoimmune disease than any other genetic or environmental risk factor yet discovered.
Autoimmune oophoritis can also be associated with autoimmune endocrinopathy syndrome type I and type II. [2] These conditions can coexists because they are all autoimmune diseases, this is called polyautoimmunity. There are some environmental causes for autoimmune diseases that have been discovered in different studies.
Other examples of insufficient immune tolerance in pregnancy are Rh disease and pre-eclampsia: Rh disease is caused by the mother producing antibodies (including IgG antibodies) against the Rhesus D antigen on their baby's red blood cells. It occurs if the mother is Rh negative and the baby is Rh positive, and a small amount of Rh positive ...