Autoimmune hepatitis

Autoimmune hepatitis, formerly known as lupoid hepatitis, plasma cell hepatitis, or autoimmune chronic active hepatitis, is a chronic autoimmune liver disease in which the immune system attacks the liver's own cells, causing ongoing inflammation. Common early symptoms include fatigue, nausea, muscle aches, and weight loss, while some people present instead with signs of acute liver inflammation such as fever, jaundice, and pain in the right upper abdomen. Many people have no symptoms at all, and the disease is often first detected through abnormal liver function test results or noticed incidentally during unrelated surgery. The condition is thought to stem from an abnormal presentation of MHC class II receptors on the surface of liver cells, which may be triggered by a genetic predisposition or a prior acute liver infection, leading the body's own cell-mediated immune response to attack the liver. Left untreated, the resulting inflammation can progress to cirrhosis. The disease most often appears in the late teens or early twenties, or between the ages of forty and fifty, and it affects women considerably more often than men.