Autoimmune disorders

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Antibodies	Graves' disease	Hashimoto's disease (chronic thyroiditis)	Multiple sclerosis
Rheumatoid arthritis	Rheumatoid arthritis	Rheumatoid arthritis	Synovial fluid
Systemic lupus erythematosus

Symptoms of autoimmune disease vary widely depending on the type of disease. A group of very nonspecific symptoms often accompany autoimmune diseases especially of the collagen vascular type and include:

• fatigue
• dizziness
• malaise (nonspecific feeling of not being well)
• fever, low-grade temperature elevations

Specific autoimmune disease results in:

• destruction of an organ or tissue resulting in decreased functioning of an organ or tissue (for example, the islet cells of the pancreas are destroyed in diabetes )
• increase in size of an organ or tissue (for example, thyroid enlargement in Grave's Disease)

Note: Symptoms vary with the specific disorder and the organ or tissue affected.

Signs vary according to the specific disorder. This disease may also alter the results of the following tests:

• erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR)
• C-reactive protein (CRP)

Review Date: 04/20/2005
Reviewed By: Stanford Peng, M.D., Ph.D., Division of Rheumatology, Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO. Review provided by VeriMed Healthcare Network.