{"id":4595,"date":"2025-02-15T22:27:59","date_gmt":"2025-02-15T22:27:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fehv.org\/?p=4595"},"modified":"2025-02-15T22:28:01","modified_gmt":"2025-02-15T22:28:01","slug":"autoimmune-hepatitis-is-it-difficult-to-diagnose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fehv.org\/en\/autoimmune-hepatitis-is-it-difficult-to-diagnose\/","title":{"rendered":"Autoimmune hepatitis, is it difficult to diagnose?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p style=\"font-size:18px\">Autoimmune hepatitis is a relatively rare disease but the number of cases has been increasing in recent years. Thus, 25 years ago its prevalence was 9.95 cases per 100,000 inhabitants and currently it is 27.91 cases per 100,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:18px\">Autoimmune hepatitis <strong>occurs because the person&#8217;s own defenses attack the liver cells, causing inflammation and destruction<\/strong>. The cause is unknown, although it has been associated with various triggers, such as hepatitis A virus or vaccines (flu, Covid, etc.). This seems logical since vaccines increase defenses and these can attack the liver when there is a genetic predisposition to do so. Also some antibiotics (minocycline, nitrofurantoin) can induce the onset of the disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading mt-5 mb-4\" id=\"h-incidence-of-acute-hepatitis\"><strong>Incidence of acute hepatitis<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:18px\">Autoimmune hepatitis is a potentially very aggressive disease and needs to be diagnosed and treated as soon as possible. It <strong>can appear at any age and affects more women than men<\/strong>, in a 4:1 ratio. There are two forms of presentation of autoimmune hepatitis: acute hepatitis and chronic disease.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:18px\">Acute hepatitis represents 25% of cases and begins with fatigue, a very significant increase in transaminases (levels can even be higher than 1,000 IU\/L) and jaundice (yellowing of the skin). For the diagnosis of acute autoimmune hepatitis, it is very important to rule out other more common causes of acute hepatitis, such as infection by <strong><a href=\"\/en\/diseases\/hepatitis-a\/\">hepatitis viruses A, B, C and E<\/a><\/strong>, Cytomegalovirus, Epstein-Barr virus, Wilson&#8217;s disease (accumulation of copper in the liver) or drugs (antipsychotics, anabolic steroids, etc.).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:18px\">Chronic liver disease presents with a moderate increase in transaminases (values \u200b\u200bgenerally less than 500 IU\/L), which present oscillations in their levels over time and are sometimes even within the limits of normality. As in acute disease, other causes of liver disease must be ruled out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading mt-5 mb-4\" id=\"h-autoimmune-hepatitis-diagnosis\"><strong>Autoimmune hepatitis diagnosis<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:18px\">Autoimmune hepatitis is <strong><a href=\"\/en\/diagnoses-and-treatments\/test-pnpla3\/\">diagnosed by the presence of autoantibodies<\/a><\/strong> in the patient&#8217;s blood (anti-smooth muscle, antinuclear, anti-LKM, etc.) and there is also usually an increase in IgG immunoglobulin. However, in around 5% of cases of autoimmune hepatitis, no autoantibodies or increased IgG levels are detected and the disease is very difficult to diagnose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p style=\"font-size:18px\">In this sense, <strong><a href=\"\/en\/especialista\/dr-vicente-carreno\/\">Dr. Carre\u00f1o and his team at the Foundation<\/a><\/strong> take into account all these disease onset profiles to diagnose autoimmune hepatitis. They also always recommend doing a liver biopsy to confirm the diagnosis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Autoimmune liver disease occurs when the immune system attacks the liver, leading to inflammation and damage. Although its cause is unclear, viruses, vaccines, and antibiotics may trigger it. Early diagnosis is essential to managing and treating this potentially severe condition.","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4593,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[896,1127,1626,827,1458],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-autoinmune-hepatitis","category-diagnosis","category-diagnosticos-en","category-diseases","category-enfermedades-en"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v23.7 (Yoast SEO v23.7) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Autoimmune hepatitis, is it difficult to diagnose? - Cl\u00ednica FEHV<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Autoimmune liver disease occurs when the immune system attacks liver cells, causing inflammation and damage. Early diagnosis is crucial.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fehv.org\/en\/autoimmune-hepatitis-is-it-difficult-to-diagnose\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Autoimmune hepatitis, is it difficult to diagnose?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Autoimmune liver disease occurs when the immune system attacks liver cells, causing inflammation and damage. 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