Autoimmune diseases overwhelmingly strike women

March 3, 2000
Web posted at: 3:02 PM EST (2002 GMT)

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- Autoimmune diseases caused when the body starts attacking itself overwhelmingly strike women -- and are often misdiagnosed, medical experts told a United Nations panel.

Between 75 percent and 90 percent of those suffering from diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis and lupus are women, said Dr. Denise Faustman, an associate professor at Harvard Medical School and director of the Immunobiology Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital.

And autoimmune disease is now the third major category of illness in the United States and many industrialized countries, behind heart disease and cancer, said Dr. Noel Rose, a pioneer in autoimmune research at Johns Hopkins University School of Public Health.

Yet the more than 80 serious chronic illnesses caused when the body's immune system attacks its tissues are not as well-known and publicized as heart disease, cancer and infectious diseases.

Rose said Thursday that the reason was autoimmunity as a cause of disease is a relatively new concept -- only about 40 years old -- and autoimmune diseases can affect any part of the body so symptoms vary enormously, making diagnosis difficult.

But Faustman believes there is another reason these diseases are forgotten.

"Middle-aged women are not fashionable" -- and they are the main victims, she said.

"It's fashionable to talk about young people dying, children dying. But it's not fashionable to talk about some woman who can't walk down the hallway" or loses her job because of arthritis, Faustman said. "It's slow and chronic and you don't die and get the attention."

One of the major goals of the panel, held in conjunction with a meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, was to deliver a message to the international community that autoimmune disease is a major women's health issue.

Autoimmune diseases "affect hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of women in developing and developed countries alike," said Dr. Nafsiah Mboi, director of the Department of Women's Health at the World Health Organization in Geneva.

Autoimmune diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, which causes painful joints; lupus, which can affect any part of the body and is sometime fatal; Graves' disease, which affects the eyes and results from an overactive thyroid; and Crohn's disease, an inflammatory bowel disorder. All are due to misguided T-cells in white blood cells, which direct the immune system.

Actress Kellie Martin, a spokeswoman for the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association, described how her 19-year-old sister died of lupus, which was repeatedly misdiagnosed.

"It's scary how much we don't know," she said. "I hope today marks another step to end a lot of needless pain and suffering."

The National Institutes of Health has made autoimmune disorders a priority for research, said Dr. Vivian Pinn, the institutes' associate director for research on women's health. Topics for research include the role of genetics, environmental influences, age, pregnancy, hormones and other biological influences, she said.

Professor Jean-Francois Bach, head of the immunology research laboratories at Necker Hospital in Paris, said autoimmune diseases are more common in northern, colder countries, and appear to be related to a higher standard of living and perhaps also temperature.

Bach said research has shown that female hormones, especially estrogen, boost immune -- and autoimmune -- responses.

Virginia Ladd, president of the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association and a longtime lupus sufferer, said now that scientists have discovered the underlying cause of autoimmune diseases is the same, these chronic illnesses should be considered as a whole.

"We need to look at them as a group -- and that is where we think we will begin to find a cure," she said.

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