When a foreign substance enters our body, it identifies the danger and our immune system then produces antibodies in response to the antigen that may be present on the surface of that substance. This is our body’s way of fighting against the infection and it is what we call an immune response. The antigen induces an immune response. Now, what will happen if these antibodies that are being produced to fight the pathogenic bacteria or the virus actually start damaging its own healthy tissues? When this happens, we refer it as overactivity of the immune system. This is what give rises to an auto-immune disease.

Now there could be several factors that affect this autoimmunity. It can be an infection or an injury or a genetic risk or even when the body is fighting against another major disease like cancer. It is constantly producing an immune response that might identify the healthy cells as the pathogenic ones and attack. However, there isn’t any data or information to prove that if any of these are the real causes but there has been a lot of research around these by the scientists and several theories to understand the same. Different types of auto-immune diseases affect a wide range of our body parts and can have different underlying causes.

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The data shows that these disorders affect women more as compared to men. Some of the most common ones in women include Psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and thyroid diseases, both hyperthyroidism( excess production of thyroid hormone in the body) and hypothyroidism (lack of thyroid hormone in the body).

Although symptoms could differ for different diseases, some of the common ones are fever, skin problems, swollen glands, joint pain, gut issues, abdominal pain, fatigue, etc. Due to the symptoms being common in case of a lot of other conditions and also due to the lack of a deciding factor or a specific test for the detection of an auto-immune disorder, it becomes quite difficult to make a timely diagnosis.