Neurology Medicine

Autoimmunity is a common cause of human disease, affecting approximately 2% of the population and results from a failure or disruption of the mechanisms that are normally responsible for self-tolerance.

Self-tolerance, or lack of response to self antigens, is a process that actively acquires, or it is learned, by which it prevents potentially autoreactive lymphocytes acquire the capacity to respond to self antigens, or they inactive after meeting with them.

Multiple interacting factors contribute to the development of autoimmune diseases: immune disorders, genetic predisposition, tissue changes and microbial infections.
Autoimmune diseases can be systemic or organ specific.

Among the former, it highlights the rheumatologic conditions such as lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, dermato / polymyositis and others. Among those that affect a particular organ or a system specific structures are the two entities that we develop in this chapter: multiple sclerosis and myasthenia gravis plaque.

The main difficulty in defining the mechanisms of autoimmune diseases is the inability to identify the antigens that initiate the responses, so the specific etiology is unknown in most of these pathologies.
In the autoimmune disease as the subject does not recognize the cell itself is proper.

The immune system is inherited, it is initially pluripotent and the subject has to own. But at some point in their lives no longer protect it from external or internal threats and attacks, is an aggressive and destructive immune system or denies breaking tolerance mechanisms and damages the body it served.