i have been getting bouts of iritis now for about 7 years,and recently seems to be quite unwell flu/bugs/ etc and take a good while to get over them. i also have monthly b12 injection and take thyroxine daily for under active thryoid. i am under an eye hospital as i am pre disposed to glucoma. they have told me the iritis is a auto immune problem,but i keep wondering why i get it ,usually twice a year i always feel very tired and run down, i take vitimins and try and eat well, i walk daily for about 20 mins. i am only 57 now if i am like this now what will i be like when i am older? what is going on in my body? any thoughts please.

Iritis is generally associated with an autoimmune condition, such as arthritis. It is basically when your iris gets inflamed without any kind of injury. The eye doctor can look inside your eye and actually see if you have inflammatory cells inside your eye, which will indicated how severe the iritis is. You should know that iritis CAN lead to blindness if the pressure inside your eye gets too high, so don't hesitate to contact your doctor if you are experiencing severe pain. Has your eye doctor put you on steroid eye drops to control inflammation during a flare? It works fairly quickly to reduce inflammation and pain. Have you been examined for other types of autoimmune conditions? If you are curious, you could request blood work to measure your SED rate, CRP, ANA, RF, etc. to rule out something like RA or another autoimmune condition. Usually, iritis doesn't exist without an underlying condition.

thank you for your post it was very intresting. i am very intrested as to what the under lying conditions might be? i do not seem to have any indications of arthritis. could you please tell me more about what the blood test are for and what conditions might be present.

thank you in advance.

Sure. Those blood tests measure a number of things which would help to diagnose an autoimmune condition. They are not fool proof, but definitely helpful. The SED rate measures how quickly your red blood cells settle over a period of time. If you have inflammation, they settle at a different rate than a normal person (I believe faster, but I'm not positive). Anything over a level of 25 is considered high. The ANA is an antibody test that helps rule out conditions like lupus. The RF is the rheumatoid factor and is associated with rheumatological conditions, although you can be positive without having a condition and negative and still have a disease, it just makes it more likely that you are predisposed to a rheum. condition if you are positive. Another one to check is the HLA-B27 gene, which is a gene associated with many many autoimmune conditions. If you are positive, you are predisposed to these conditions, although I, myself am negative for it, which is not that uncommon. Also, get a general chem panel done, which will be a baseline for future blood work. It measures tons of things. Just so you know, the underlying conditions associated with iritis are lupus, RA, ulcerative colitis, crohn's disease, arthritis of all types (ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic...), Behcet's disease, sarcoidosis, scleroderma,and Reiter's disease. (these are all autoimmune) I hope this is helpful.