Immunology

Autoimmunity and Inflammation

Treatment for autoimmune diseases generally focuses on reducing system activity. Inflammation may be a process by which the body's white blood cells and substances they produce protect us from infection with foreign organisms, like bacteria and viruses. However, in some diseases, like arthritis, the body's defense system -- the system -- triggers an inflammatory response when there are not any foreign invaders to repel. In these diseases, called autoimmune diseases, the body's normally protective system causes damage to its own tissues. Inflammations are often classified as either acute or chronic. Prolonged inflammation, mentioned as chronic inflammation, results in a progressive shift within the sort of cells present at things of inflammation, like mononuclear cells. Conversely, there's pathology where microbial invasion doesn't cause the classic inflammatory response – as an example, parasitosis or eosinophilia. Inflammation isn't a synonym for infection. Inflammation on the other hand describes purely the body's immunovascular response, no matter the cause could even be. But thanks to how often the two are correlated, words ending within the suffix -itis (which refers to inflammation) are sometimes informally described as concerning infection.

• Rheumatoid arthritis
• Inflammatory bowel disease
• Multiple sclerosis
• Graves' disease
• Myasthenia gravis
• Vasculitis
• Swollen joint that's sometimes warm to the touch
• Loss of joint function