Do You Know Your Family AQ?

Saturday, March 1, 2008

Do You KnowYour Family AQ? (NAPSA)—There are steps you can take to protect yourself and 1. Get educated. health issue. According to the National Institutes of Health, 23.5 2. Be aware that autoimmune diseases tend to target women. your family from a major U.S. million Americans suffer from autoimmunediseases (ADs), making them more prevalent than cancer, which in all its forms affects 9 million, and heart disease, which strikes 22 million. ADs run in families. So it can be vital to know your Family AQ, or Autoimmune Quotient. To help, the American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association (AARDA)offers the following: 1. Get educated. There are more than 80 known ADs and an additional 40 suspected ones. They include multiple sclerosis, myasthenia gravis, scleroderma, polymyositis, vasculitis, lupus, Sjgren’s syndrome and Crohn’s disease. Autoimmunity—whereby the immune system mistakenly recognizes the body’s own proteins as foreign invaders and produces antibodies to attack healthy cells and tissues—is the underlying cause of these diseases. 2. Be aware that autoimmune diseases tend to target women. Someestimates indicate that 75 percent of those affected are women in their childbearing years. 3. Know that autoimmune diseases run in families. Current research points to a genetic compo- nent. However, ADsare not typical genetic diseases, such assickle cell anemia, where there is a specific gene mutation. With ADs, multiple genes are involved that collectively increase vulnerability or susceptibility. As a result, ADs tend to 3. Know that autoimmune diseases run in families. 4. Do your own family medicalhistory. 5. Keep a “symptoms”list. 6. Recognize that getting an autoimmune disease diagnosis is offen challenging. “cluster” in families—not as one particular condition but as a general tendency to the process and, consequently, different diseases. 4, Do your own family medical history. Given the family connection, knowing the health histories of other family members is critical. Once you know your family history, share it with your doctor. 5. Keep a “symptoms”list. People with ADs often suffer from a number of symptoms that, on the surface, seem unrelated. It’s important, therefore, to list every major symptom you’ve experi- enced so you can present it clearly to your doctor. 6. Recognize that getting an autoimmune disease diagnosis is often challenging. One of the factors that makes getting a correct AD diagnosis so difficult is that symptoms can vary widely, notably from one disease to another but even within the same disease. Also, because ADs affect multiple systems, their symptoms can often be misleading. Fortunately, you can find information and a complete AD list at www.aarda.org.

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