AUTOIMMUNITY part 31

Epidemiology of autoimmune disease

There are nearly 100 different forms of autoimmune disease, making these disorders a major cause of chronic illness, affecting up to 3 percent of the general population. Nearly any organ can be affected by either systemic or organ-specific autoimmune disease. Woman make up nearly  75% of all individuals afflicted by autoimmune disease, making these disorders  one of the ten leading causes of death in women  less than sixty-five years old.