[Does the number of patients with autoimmune disorders and the frequency of autoimmune diseases increase?]

Autoimmune diseases generally belong to the rare diseases, however, some of them are frequent in the population. In the present work the authors analyse whether can any increase be observed in the number of patients suffering from autoimmune diseases and whether do the frequency of certain autoimmune disorders increase. Due mainly to epigenetic factors the incidence of autoimmune diseases are increasing, therefore there are more patients recognised with particular disorders. On the other hand the incidence is increased by improving diagnostic possibilities, by the use of more specific and sensitive classification criteria and more sophisticated laboratory tests, resulted in the recognition of milder and atypical disease variants as well. The prevalence is also increasing in consequence of novel immune suppressive therapeutic possibilities and the consequent improvement of survival in the most of these diseases. Besides, more and more diseases have been revealed to have autoimmune background, and lot of new autoimmune syndromes, diseases have been characterised recently. This increases the number of the known autoimmune rheumatic disorders with a consequent increase in the number of autoimmune patients. Assigned to the increasing number of variable chronic autoimmune disorders, and the increasing number of disabled patients with such diseases increasing medical and social attention has to be focused on.