Page 1209 - Veterinary Immunology, 10th Edition

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

After reading this chapter, you should be able to:

• Understand that in domestic mammals, any organ or tissue is a potential victim
of autoimmune attack.

• Recognize that the most common autoimmune diseases in domestic mammals
involve the endocrine system, the skin, and blood cells.
• Understand why treatment of autoimmune diseases usually involves suppression

of the destructive inflammatory lesion by corticosteroids.
• Understand the principles of the antiglobulin test and the indirect
immunofluorescence assay.

• Understand that in diseases such as diabetes mellitus, some cases may be due
to autoimmunity while others are not.
• Explain that in many animal diseases, the development of autoantibodies is a

consequence not a cause of the disease.

Autoimmune diseases that mainly affect a single organ or tissue
presumably result from an abnormal response to a small number of
self-antigens and do not necessarily reflect loss of control of the

immune system as a whole. All tissues of the body are potentially
susceptible to this form of immunological attack. Nevertheless,
autoimmune diseases directed against endocrine organs, skin,
blood, and the nervous system, tend to be most common. Their

prevalence depends to a great extent on the species and breed of an
animal as well as its age.

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