Are We Facing an Autoimmune Disease Epidemic?
Most of us expect that when we pick up a cold or flu bug, our immune systems will swoop in, fight off the invading bacteria or viruses and leave us no worse for wear. What happens when the immune system doesn’t protect you the way it’s supposed to, or worse, when your immune system turns on you? What are autoimmune diseases, and why are we seeing more and more of these diseases being diagnosed every year?
What Are Autoimmune Diseases?
Autoimmune diseases are defined as a disease that develops when your immune system decides healthy cells are foreign and attacks and destroys them. You’ve probably heard of a variety of these diseases, even if you didn’t realize they fell under the autoimmune umbrella, including:
• Rheumatoid arthritis – the body’s immune system attacks joints and occasionally organ tissues.
• Lupus – the immune system attacks healthy tissues in the joints, skin, blood, heart and lungs, though it can affect other systems as well.
• Celiac – an immune reaction caused by eating gluten, during which the immune system attacks the lining of the small intestine.
• Type 1 diabetes – The immune system attacks and destroys insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.
These diseases, and as many as 100 others, are all caused when the immune system goes a little haywire and starts attacking cells that are otherwise healthy.
Just how many people suffer from autoimmune diseases? Well, the number varies depending on who you ask.
According to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), around 23.5 million Americans live with at least one form of autoimmune disease. The American Autoimmune Related Disease Association (AARDA), on the other hand, puts those numbers at closer to 50 million.
Why such a difference?
While there are upwards of 100 different identified autoimmune diseases, the numbers that the NIH are working with only include around 24 of those diseases, due to a lack of epidemiology studies for the remaining diseases.
It’s hard to call the rising number of diagnosed autoimmune diseases an epidemic because we’re lacking a significant portion of the necessary information, but thankfully, more and more researchers are starting to look into the rising number of diagnoses.
Additionally, many of these autoimmune disorders are hard to diagnose because they can affect nearly any system in the body and can share symptoms with other diseases. Many doctors don’t know how to effectively diagnose these diseases either, making getting an accurate diagnosis a costly and exhausting exercise.
Many researchers who believe that this rise in autoimmune diseases marks the beginnings of an epidemic blame it on environmental conditions. Type 1 diabetes, for example, has increased more than five times over the past four decade. Much of this can be blamed on environmental factors, save for the fact that diagnoses in children under 4 are increasing by 6 percent per year. What environmental factors could contribute to this autoimmune manifestation in children so young?
While it may be too early to tell if this is going to develop into a full-blown autoimmune epidemic, there are definitely enough trends indicating this possibility to cause concern. What we need right now is more dedicated research into all of the currently known autoimmune diseases. What causes them? Are there genetic predispositions that we should be aware of? Are there environmental factors that are causing these diseases that we can or should change?
Until we have answers, this potential epidemic leaves us with unanswered questions. Don’t we owe it to the next generation to find out what is causing this upsurge in autoimmune diseases?