What Are Autoimmune Disorders?

What Are Autoimmune Disorders?

In autoimmune disorders, a person's immune system attacks the body's healthy tissues as though they were foreign invaders. If the attack is severe enough, it can affect how well that body part works. For example, type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that affects the pancreas. In type 1 diabetes, the pancreas can't make insulin because the immune system attacks the pancreas and destroys the cells that make insulin.

People with type 1 diabetes are also more likely to have other autoimmune problems. Doctors aren't exactly sure why autoimmune diseases happen, but a person's genes probably play a role.

While other autoimmune disorders are linked to diabetes, they are not actually caused by the diabetes — they're just more likely to happen. Autoimmune diseases that people with type 1 diabetes are more likely to get include:

• thyroid disorders
• celiac disease
• Addison's disease

Sometimes people develop one or more of these problems before they develop type 1 diabetes. And sometimes doctors discover these other autoimmune diseases around the same time they find out that a person has type 1 diabetes. In other people, the disorder may not develop until months or years after they've been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.