What is autoimmune hepatitis? Well, it’s an autoimmune disease that affects the liver, leading to inflammation and hepatitis. A lot of the fundamental mechanisms behind why autoimmune develops is still unclear. Find more videos at
So, an autoimmune disease is this special sort of disease, where your own immune cells have gone rogue and start to attack your own cells, right? hepatitis happens to mean inflammation of the liver, so it’s reasonable to say that autoimmune hepatitis is this resulting inflammation of your liver tissue, because they’re being attacked by your own immune cells. the root
Cause of autoimmune hepatitis is, ultimately, not super clear, but some researchers think it’s a combination of environmental triggers an important piece of the genetic puzzle is the human leucocyte antigen system, specifically, these genes control the proteins that are encoded and used on the cell’s surface but actually alloantigens that vary from person to person,
Usually, our thymus makes sure that the t-cells that attack these self proteins there may be some abnormality associated with specific self-proteins based on studying people with autoimmune hepatitis, the dr part refers to its location on the chromosome. for example, depending on the location, you could have hla-a, hla-b, hla-c or hla d, there seems to be some sort of
Connection between these particular “self-proteins”, autoimmune hepatitis patients can sit anywhere on a spectrum from completely asymptomatic, or they might be somewhere in-between with debilitating symptoms like fever, jaundice, a condition where both the spleen and the liver are way larger than their normal size, probably caused by inflammation due to immune cell
Attack. usually, there’s only a small amount of transaminases in the blood, which are these enzymes that help metabolise amino acids. is found in both the liver as well as other tissues. so, if the liver cells are damaged by immune cells, both alt and ast start leaking out into the blood from the liver, but typically since alt is more associated with the liver, alt
Will be higher than ast, even though they both will likely be elevated. accounting for about 80% of autoimmune hepatitis cases, first, we’ll look for antibodies to your own nuclei we also call these antinuclear antibodies, or anas, and these antibodies have failed to be able to tell the difference between self and non-self, and so they end up being against the proteins
In the nuclei of your own cells. we might find antibodies that are targeting your own smooth muscle proteins as well. decreased serum albumin is also a marker for autoimmune hepatitis and damage to the liver. finally, an elevated or prolonged prothrombin time, and is defined by the presence of antibodies to the microsomes of the liver or your kidney, this type is most
Common in young girls, and usually happens alongside another autoimmune disease. initially, patients can be given immunosuppressant medications. which help inhibit the immune responses that are mediated by both b- and t-cells. and inhibits an enzyme that we need to synthesise dna, and so it strongly inhibits cells, like t-cells and b-cells,
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Autoimmune hepatitis – causes, symptoms, diagnosis, treatment & pathology By Osmosis
