What are some examples of autoimmune diseases?

• A. Inflammatory bowel disease, glomerulonephritis, myasthenia gravis, rheumatoid arthritis
• B. Asthma and hay fever
• C. Type 1 diabetes caused by infection
• D. Osteoarthritis and gout

Answer: (A)

Autoimmune diseases involve the immune system turning against the body's own tissues, causing targeted inflammation and damage. The examples shown—inflammatory bowel disease affecting the gut, autoimmune glomerulonephritis affecting the kidneys, myasthenia gravis at the neuromuscular junction, and rheumatoid arthritis attacking the joints—span different organ systems but share a common mechanism: immune components such as autoantibodies or autoreactive T cells mistakenly recognize self-tati as threats and launch an attack.

Asthma and hay fever are driven by allergic reactions, primarily IgE-mediated responses to environmental allergens, not by autoimmunity, so they don’t exemplify autoimmune disease. Type 1 diabetes is fundamentally an autoimmune process where pancreatic beta cells are destroyed, and while infections can sometimes act as triggers, the disease is not caused by infection itself. Osteoarthritis and gout are nonautoimmune conditions—osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease, and gout results from crystal deposition—so they don’t demonstrate autoimmune pathology.