Autoimmunity as the term already describes,
is a number of conditions where our immune
system, which in principle is meant to protect
us from outside dangers for reasons which
I'm not completely understood yet, turns against
our own body parts, it can turn against any
organ in our body, against structures in our
body, etc.
They are over eighty autoimmune diseases defined
and probably a good number of additional medical
problems are not yet getting recognized as
being autoimmune in nature.
So autoimmunity is a very frequent phenomenon
in humans, moreover on top-up those eighty
already well-defined autoimmune diseases like
thyroid disease, ms, lupus (those are some
of the better-known ones).
There’s even additional autoimmunity in
a very significant portion of totally or seemingly
totally healthy individuals.
Simply the fact that one of your first-degree
relatives has a defined autoimmune disease
would give you a roughly 40 percent risk of
having what is called Subclinical autoimmunity,
meaning that if certain blood tests are done
they would show up positive.
