• Question: What are the causes when the immune system attack to yourself?

    Asked by Pipu2005 to Sian, Max, Francis, Ben on 8 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Ben Mulhearn

      Ben Mulhearn answered on 8 Mar 2018:

      Thanks for the question! We don’t fully understand WHY the immune system attacks ourselves, but there are a number of suggestions. One is that we might have some genes which cause our immune system to be slightly overactive and therefore liable to attack our own body. Another is that we might get an infection and the microbes might look very similar to our own cells so the body also attacks them as well. My feeling, and probably the feeling of most scientists at the moment, is that it is caused by a combination of the two things, so it’s caused by GENES and ENVIRONMENT. What actually triggers it off in the first place though is still completely unknown and is probably different for different autoimmune diseases.

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