Ankylosing spondylitis is an inflammatory disease of the spine and sometimes joints, most often occurring in young men (up to 40 years old). The causes of its occurrence are unknown. However, 90 % of patients with ankylosing spondylitis have a genetic predisposition to the disease in the form of carrying the HLA B27 gene, it …
Autoimmune thyroiditis (Hashimoto’s disease)
Autoimmune thyroiditis is very different from other diseases that we will touch on in this book. Firstly, such patients are observed by endocrinologists, not rheumatologists. Secondly, in this disease, drugs that suppress the aggression of the immune system (prednisone and immunosuppressants) are not used at all. However, Hashimoto’s disease is the most common autoimmune disease …
When the diagnosis is generally unknown. Let’s talk a little about the “difficult” diagnosis
Sometimes even a full and comprehensive examination does not reveal the cause of poor health, and then it comes to a “difficult” diagnosis. If you find yourself in a similar situation, do not despair, let’s discuss how to act in such cases. As a rule, chronic problems that plague patients without a specific diagnosis can …
What does the immune system look like? Its role in our body
Our immune system is very complex. In simple terms, the immune system is innate and acquired (adaptive). Initially, at birth, our body has some basic settings to fight against numerous infections of the surrounding world. It is this part of the immune system (innate immunity) that allows the child to survive at birth. In the …
Immunity is one-there are many diseases
Autoimmune disease is a condition where the immune system is aggressively set up against its own organs and tissues, while in the blood there are special protein compounds – autoantibodies, which, like a targeted bombardment, selectively attack only certain structures of our tissues, causing damage to them with subsequent dysfunction. Typical autoimmune diseases include Hashimoto’s …
History of Epidemics
“And the Philistines took the ark of God and brought it from Ebenezer Unto Ashdod… And the hand of the Lord was heavy upon the azotans, and he smote them, and punished them with painful growths, in Azot and in its vicinity. And the azotans saw it, and said, let not the ark of the …
Tuberculosis — Disease of Dampness and Hunger
“She is still alive today, tomorrow is not” — in his famous and unfinished poem dedicated to the” dreary time”, Alexander Pushkin compares autumn to a” consumptive maiden”, condemned to death. Consumption, or, in scientific terms, tuberculosis, was the scourge of the old “pre-antibiotic” times. Until the advent of antibiotics such as streptomycin and rifampicin, …