Meaning & use
autoimmune disorder
Last updated
Meaning
nouncountablemedical
A medical condition in which the body's defense system mistakenly attacks the body's own healthy tissues.
Grammar: Countable: lupus is an autoimmune disorder.
Patterns
- suffer from an autoimmune disorder
- diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disorder that affects insulin production.
Doctors tested her for an autoimmune disorder after months of fatigue.
An autoimmune disorder can be managed, though many are lifelong.
Word forms
| plural | autoimmune disorders |
|---|
Common combinations
- diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder
- He was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder last year.
- suffer from an autoimmune disorder
- She suffers from a rare autoimmune disorder.
- treat an autoimmune disorder
- The drug can treat an autoimmune disorder.
- chronic autoimmune disorder
- Arthritis can be a chronic autoimmune disorder.
- symptoms of an autoimmune disorder
- Fatigue is among the symptoms of an autoimmune disorder.
Synonyms and how they differ
- autoimmune disease
- Autoimmune disease is the more common term in everyday speech, while disorder sounds a bit softer.
- autoimmunity
- Autoimmunity names the process of the body attacking itself, not the condition.
- immune disorder
- Immune disorder is wider and includes weak immunity, not just self-attack.
Word family
- immune adjective
- protected from disease
- immunity noun
- the body's ability to resist disease
- autoimmune adjective
- relating to attacks on one's own tissues
- disorder noun
- a medical condition
Commonly confused: autoimmune disorder or immunodeficiency?
autoimmune disorder vs immunodeficiency
Immunodeficiency means the immune system is too weak, whereas an autoimmune disorder means it attacks the body.
Practice
In an ___, the immune system attacks the body's own cells.
Choose one answer.
Autoimmune disorder is the condition of self-attack. An allergic reaction targets outside substances such as pollen.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “autoimmune disorder”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.