There are several questions which are asked regularly - in one form or another - of which something like "If I have one autoimmune disease, am I likely to get/have another?" is pretty high up the list. And it is so very understandable.
Of course, if you and your medics put everything down to autoimmune thyroid disease, you could entirely miss seeing other diseases. So recognising that if you have one, your medics positively should be looking for others could be an important step towards diagnosis and possible treatment.
Someone asked that and triggered this post - but I am afraid I cannot locate that post so as to put a callout into this post.
Recent advances in understanding autoimmune thyroid disease: the tallest tree in the forest of polyautoimmunity
Sofie Bliddal
1, Claus Henrik Nielsen2, Ulla Feldt-Rasmussen1
Author details
1 Department of Medical Endocrinology, Section 2132, Copenhagen University Hospital (Rigshospitalet), Blegdamsvej 9, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
2 Institute for Inflammation Research, Center for Rheumatology and Spine Diseases, section 7521, Copenhagen University Hospital (Rigshospitalet), Blegdamsvej 9, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
Abstract
Autoimmune thyroid disease (AITD) is often observed together with other autoimmune diseases. The coexistence of two or more autoimmune diseases in the same patient is referred to as polyautoimmunity, and AITD is the autoimmune disease most frequently involved. The occurrence of polyautoimmunity has led to the hypothesis that the affected patients suffer from a generalized dysregulation of their immune system. The present review summarizes recent discoveries unravelling the immunological mechanisms involved in autoimmunity, ranging from natural autoimmunity to disease-specific autoimmunity. Furthermore, the clinical grounds for considering AITD in a setting of polyautoimmunity are explored. A better understanding of these may pave the way for designing new treatment modalities targeting the underlying immune dysregulation when AITD appears in the context of polyautoimmunity.
Rest of paper freely accessible here:
f1000research.com/articles/...
and
ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articl...
Also indexed in PubMed:
Fibromyalgia and thyroid autoimmune disease
