• DOI:10.1111/j.1749-6632.1965.tb18990.x
• Corpus ID: 39456072

AUTOIMMUNITY IN PERNICIOUS ANEMIA AND THYROIDITIS: A FAMILY STUDY *

@article{Doniach1965AUTOIMMUNITYIP,
  title={AUTOIMMUNITY IN PERNICIOUS ANEMIA AND THYROIDITIS: A FAMILY STUDY *},
  author={Deborah Doniach and Ivan Maurice Roitt and K. B. Taylor},
  journal={Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences},
  year={1965},
  volume={124}
}

• D. Doniach, I. Roitt, K. Taylor
• Published 1 June 1965
• Medicine, Biology
• Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences

The familial occurrence of myxoedema and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis has been well documented (Craig et al . , 1952; Dunning, 1959; Kitchin & Howell-Evans, 1960; Irvine et al., 1961; Hung & Winship, 1963). Thyroid autoantibodies were found by Hall, Owen and Smart (1960) in 22 of 39 siblings of patients with autoimmune thyroid disease and no less than 11 of these had some clinical abnormality of the thyroid gland. I t was concluded that the tendency to thyroid autoimmunity was genetically determined and inherited as a dominant characteristic. An extension of these studies to parents of young patients with thyroiditis (Hall, Saxena & Owen, 1962) showed that antibodies could be detected in one or both parents in 17 of the 19 families investigated. Evidence for a familial component has also been established in pernicious anemia (Mosbech, 1953; Callender & Denborough, 1957; McIntyre et al., 1959). Several members of the same family may develop pernicious anemia. Further, a proportion of relatives may show defective production of gastric acid and impaired absorption of vitamin B12 without megaloblastic anemia. There is good evidence of autoimmunization in pernicious anemia as well as in thyroiditis, and this may provide the basis for the remarkable serological overlap observed in thyroid disease and chronic gastritis (Irvine et al., 1962; Markson & Moore, 1962; Doniach et al., 1963; Doniach & Roitt, 1964) and for the statistically significant association of pernicious anemia with thyroid disorders (Tudhope & Wilson, 1960, 1962; McNicol, 1961; Williams & Doniach, 1962). Autoimmunization in these diseases appears to be essentially organ-specific (Taylor et al., 1962), in contrast with the connective tissue diseases in which a breakdown in tolerance towards freely circulating, nonorgan-specific body constituents seems to be the characteristic feature (Hijmans et al . , 1961). In an attempt to establish a genetic pattern in pernicious anemia and to elucidate the factors underlying autoimmune diseases and the associations between pernicious anemia and thyroid disease, we considered it of interest to study the manifestations of gastric and thyroid autoimmunity and the incidence of nonorgan-specific antibodies in the relatives of patients with Hashimoto’s disease and with pernicious anemia respectively.