Autoimmune rheumatic pathologies affect 4% of the population.

According to the Spanish Society of Rheumatology, 4% (2.5% to 8%) of the world’s population suffer from some systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (ERAS), and of this total, 75 percent are women, representing a ratio of 10 women to every man. Rheumatology (RER).

“The most important thing is that in developed countries they are the leading cause of death in women under 65 and cause high morbidity,” warned Dr. Blanca Hernandez, a rheumatologist at the Virgen Macarena University Hospital in Seville. During the “IX Symposium on Systemic Autoimmune Diseases of the Spanish Society of Rheumatology (SER)”, held in Bilbao, the specialist noted that there are differences between men and women in terms of the manifestation of ERA symptoms.

However, he noted that “research on this issue has just begun and is often confounded by other determining factors such as race, age and sociocultural level, and even gender bias in the research itself.” Clear differences between both sexes are observed in the area of ​​spondyloarthritis, in which axial involvement and peripheral destructive arthritis are more common in men, while women have poorer physical function and quality of life. On the other hand, men with primary Sjögren’s syndrome have more severe extraglandular disease; and one of the most common manifestations of antiphospholipid syndrome occurs exclusively in women during abortion or intrauterine fetal death. Another characteristic symptomatology is that severe eye damage is rare in women with spondyloarthritis, whereas with sarcoidosis in this group it is severe and serious. Additionally, women experience greater extracranial involvement when they have giant cell arteritis. In the case of systemic lupus erythematosus, Caucasian men had a later age of onset and a higher percentage of lesions; while differences in clinical manifestations were found in Hispanic men, such as higher rates of arthritis, fever and kidney damage, “but these were not clear in Caucasians or North American patients, so in this case the association is confounded with ethnicity” , he clarified.

According to modern research, primary Sjögren’s syndrome affects 10 women for every man; with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and primary biliary cholangitis the ratio is 10 to 2; with antiphospholipid syndrome this figure is 9 to 1; for autoimmune thyroid diseases (Graves’ disease and Hashimoto’s disease) it is 10 women for every 3 men, and the ratio for systemic scleroderma and myasthenia gravis is 6 to 1.