What is the Difference Between Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory

The key difference between autoimmune and autoinflammatory is that autoimmune diseases are caused by the impairment of adaptive immunity, while autoinflammatory diseases are caused due to unregulated innate immunity.

Immunity is a condition set by the body to identify foreign pathogens and fight against them. The whole immunity system gets classified into two subsets called innate immunity and adaptive immunity. Innate immunity provides non-specific immune responses, while adaptive immunity provides specific immune responses against foreign pathogens or antigens. Autoimmune and autoinflammatory are disease conditions that occur due to impairment of adaptive and innate immunity, respectively.

CONTENTS

1. Overview and Key Difference
2. What is Autoimmune  
3. What is Autoinflammatory
4. Similarities – Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory
5. Autoimmune vs Autoinflammatory in Tabular Form
6. Summary – Autoimmune vs Autoinflammatory

What is Autoimmune?

Autoimmune is a disease condition caused due to the impairment of adaptive immunity in the body. In autoimmune diseases, adaptive immunity attacks and destroys healthy body tissues by mistake. Autoimmune disease condition occurs when the adaptive immune system takes over during instances where innate immunity cannot destroy a pathogen. During such unknown triggers, adaptive immunity produces antibodies that attack the body’s own tissues.

Autoimmune disease conditions include rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, inflammatory bowel disease, diabetes (type 1), scleroderma, etc. Treatment for autoimmune conditions mainly includes the reduction of activity of the immune system by medication.

What is Autoinflammatory?

Autoinflammatory is a disease condition that occurs due to unregulated innate immunity. Innate immunity is the body’s first line of defense against different types of pathogens, including bacteria and viruses. Autoinflammatory conditions cause intense episodes of inflammation. During an autoinflammatory condition, recurrent episodes of fever and skin lesions occur. The skin lesions include rash, oral ulcers, generalized pustular psoriasis, etc.

Diseases under autoinflammatory condition are Familial Mediterranean Fever (FMF), Neonatal Onset Multisystem Inflammatory Disease (NOMID), Deficiency of the Interleukin-1 Receptor Antagonist (DIRA), Behçet’s disease, Tumour Necrosis Factor Receptor-Associated Periodic Syndrome (TRAPS), etc. Changes in the genetic code and mutations play a major role in the occurrence of autoinflammatory conditions.

What are the Similarities Between Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory?

• Autoimmune and autoinflammatory are two conditions related to the immunity system.
• Both conditions cause immune responses against foreign pathogens.
• They are treatable conditions.
• They can cause pain, swelling, fevers, and inflammation.

What is the Difference Between Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory?

Autoimmune is a disease condition caused due to the impairment of adaptive immunity, while autoinflammatory is a disease condition that occurs due to unregulated innate immunity. Thus, this is the key difference between autoimmune and autoinflammatory. Autoimmune conditions do not consist of a specific flare pattern, while autoinflammatory conditions consist of a more specific flare pattern whose occurrence is cyclic and predictable.

The below infographic presents the differences between autoimmune and antiinflammatory in tabular form for side-by-side comparison.

Summary – Autoimmune vs Autoinflammatory

Innate immunity and adaptive immunity are two categories of the immune system. Innate immunity provides non-specific immune responses, while adaptive immunity provides specific immune responses against foreign pathogens or antigens. Autoimmune disease conditions occur due to the impairment of adaptive immunity. On the other hand, autoinflammatory disease conditions occur due to unregulated innate immunity. Both lead to abnormal conditions, which could be treated with proper medication. While genetics do not play a role in autoimmune diseases, it plays a major role in autoinflammatory conditions. So, this summarizes the difference between autoimmune and autoinflammatory.

Reference:

1. “Autoimmune Disorders.” MedlinePlus, U.S. National Library of Medicine.
2. “Autoinflammatory Diseases.” National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Image Courtesy:

1. “Fimmu-12-744396-g002” By Katie Glover, Deepakkumar Mishra, and Thakur Raghu Raj Singh – Glover K, Mishra D and Singh TRR (2021) Epidemiology of Ocular Manifestations in Autoimmune Disease. Front. Immunol. 12:744396. doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.744396 (CC BY 4.0) via Commons Wikimedia