Autoimmune oophoritis

Autoimmune oophoritis is a rare autoimmune disease where the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the ovaries. This causes the ovaries to have inflammation, atrophy and fibrosis. The changes to the ovaries can cause them to not function properly.

Signs and symptoms

• Primary amenorrhea – where menstruation has never occurred
• Secondary amenorrhea – where menstruation occurred once puberty happened but then later stopped
• Infertility
• Sex hormone deficiency
• Lower abdominal pain
• Fever
• Malaise
• Vaginal discharge
• Irregular bleeding or absent menstrual period – also known as amenorrhea
• Symptoms that are related to cysts

Causes

The underlying cause of autoimmune oophoritis is unknown. In many cases it can be a part of lupus, pernicious anemia, myasthenia gravis, or other autoimmune conditions. Autoimmune oophoritis can be associated with autoimmune polyglandular syndrome type I and type II.

Diagnoses

Diagnosis involves a special blood test which looks for anti-steroid or anti-ovarian antibodies, a pelvic ultrasound to look for enlarged cystic ovaries, and other type of tests to rule out other issues that can be a part of primary ovarian insufficiency (POI).

References

 This article incorporates public domain material from websites or documents of the National Institutes of Health.

External links

Classification

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