How is epidemiology of autoimmune diseases?

➢ There are nearly 100 different forms of autoimmune disease, affecting up to 3 percent of the general population. ➢ Nearly any organ can be affected by either systemic or organ-specific autoimmune disease ➢ Women make up nearly 75 percent of all individuals afflicted by autoimmune disease, making these disorders one of the ten leading causes of death in women less than sixty-five years old. (may be hormonal) ➢ However, the female-to-male ratio varies widely among different diseases, being as high as 9:1 in SLE, Sjögren’s syndrome, and autoimmune thyroiditis and as low as 1:1 in vitiligo, TID, and Goodpasture’s syndrome Age of onset: some early childhood, some childbearing age, other later