In general, more females than males have autoimmune conditions, with perhaps some exceptions as the below letter to Lancet argues.
Quote:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(05)71337-4/fulltext20 January 2001
' . . . We agree that, in most autoimmune diseases, women are more likely to develop disease than men. However, we wish to make two points-first, myasthenia gravis (MG) seems to be an autoimmune disease with a more complicated and idiosyncratic distribution between the sexes, and second, the 75% value mentioned above is incorrect.
Although MG is generally seen as an autoimmune disease with a 2:1 femaleto-male ratio (but not the 3:1 implied by the 75% value mentioned), this ratio refers to the prevalence rather than to the incidence ratio. We have shown that the female-to-male incidence ratio is 1:1, which agrees with the unequal prevalence ratio. Specifically, of the 601 incident cases identified in Greece between 1986 and 1997, 301 were women and 300 men. The discrepancy between the incidence and prevalence ratios is clearly related to differences in the average age of onset between women and men (40·1 vs 55·1 years), which, since mortality from MG is very low, means that the theoretical life expectancy after MG onset in women is almost double that in males (40·9 years and 23·4 years, respectively). . . '
The two authors include four references. But all the same, this is a letter to the editor, not a peer-reviewed article.
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Alright, I am open-minded to the idea that autoimmune conditions cause
some cases of autism. But the fact that autoimmune conditions are more common in females and autism is more commonly diagnosed in males, that does cast some doubt.
Maybe the fact that autism is underdiagnosed in females swamps the rate of natural occurrence. Maybe. And also just the idea that autism probably has multiple causes and any one cause, of any type, only explains
some cases.
08 Jan 2014, 12:45 pm
