Autoimmunity happens when your immune system mistakenly attacks your own tissues, labeling them as threats. Doctors test for autoantibodies, antibodies that bind to your own cells. Anti-thyroid antibodies or anti-joint antibodies can cause conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.
Autoimmune literally means my immune system has decided a piece of me is a bad guy and it wants to attack me. In the laboratory testing, we are looking for antibodies that come from our own immune system and they happen to be against our own body, right? So I could have anti-thyroid antibodies, I could have anti-membrane, anti-joint membrane antibodies and have something like a rheumatoid arthritis or something in that spectrum. I could have any other antibody and I having autoimmunity against that part of my body.
