Meaning & use
autoimmune disease
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountablemedical
An illness caused by the body's defense system mistakenly attacking its own healthy cells or tissues.
Grammar: Usually used with an or the: she has an autoimmune disease.
Patterns
- have an autoimmune disease
- be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease
Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease that inflames the joints.
Her doctor ran blood tests to check for an autoimmune disease.
Many autoimmune diseases are more common in women than in men.
Word forms
| plural | autoimmune diseases |
|---|
Common combinations
- develop an autoimmune disease
- He developed an autoimmune disease in his thirties.
- be diagnosed with an autoimmune disease
- She was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease after months of fatigue.
- treat an autoimmune disease
- Doctors often treat an autoimmune disease with drugs that calm the immune system.
- chronic autoimmune disease
- Living with a chronic autoimmune disease means planning around flare-ups.
- rare autoimmune disease
- The charity funds research into a rare autoimmune disease.
Synonyms and how they differ
- autoimmune disorder
- It is almost interchangeable, though disorder sounds slightly more clinical and is common in medical writing.
- autoimmune condition
- It is a softer, everyday phrase often used when talking to patients rather than in textbooks.
- immune-mediated disease
- It is broader and more technical, covering illnesses driven by immune activity even when the body is not attacking itself.
Word family
- autoimmunity noun
- the state in which the immune system attacks the body's own tissue
- immune adjective
- protected against a particular disease
- immunity noun
- the body's ability to resist infection
- immunology noun
- the science of the immune system
Commonly confused: autoimmune disease or immunodeficiency?
autoimmune disease vs immunodeficiency
This means the immune system is too weak to fight infection, whereas autoimmune disease means it is overactive against the body itself.
Practice
Which statement best describes an autoimmune disease?
Choose one answer.
In an autoimmune disease the immune system turns on the body's own tissue. The third option describes immunodeficiency, which is the opposite problem of a weak immune system.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “autoimmune disease”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.