Auto-Immune Disease - Research Article
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| Definition / Overview | Causes / Symptoms | Hypothyroidism |
| Pemphigus | Canine Lupus | Auto-Immune Hemolytic Anemia |
Definition / Overview
Dogs—like cats, like humans, like all other species—are filled with microscopic elements that respond initially to trauma, disease, discomfort, or anything invasive with protection and rejection. Put together, these substances form the basis of a dog’s immune system. When a dog encounters something harmful, injurious, or invasive, its immune system springs into action, seeking to minimize the injury or illness and send the dog on the road to recovery. The better the system works, the sooner the injury heals, the infection clears, or the illness ends.
The Canine Immune System
The immune system is a complex defense network of white blood cells, antibodies, and other substances that fight off infections and reject foreign proteins. It is a force patrolling the body, designed to distinguish one'ss own cells from outside cells by trace markers found on the surface of every cell in the body. It is this ability that causes the bodies of human beings and animals to reject skin grafts, blood transfusions, and organ transplants. Like anything else in life, the immune system can fail, either by not doing enough or by doing too much.
Such is the natural process by which the body responds to so many harmful outside agencies that a breakdown in a dog’s immune system is so destructive. A collapse of the immune system leaves the body open to attack by an opportunistic infection from outside elements. In these situations, lacking the body's natural defense mechanisms, a dog might suffer terribly from the most ordinary of injuries.
An Auto-Immune Disease, on the other hand, is a different kind of immune system failure. In this situation, the immune system fails to recognize itself, and it begins to attack and reject the body's own tissue as foreign. One specific tissue type, such as red blood cells, may be affected, or a generalized illness, such as systemic lupus (see below), may result.
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