No it is not. Autoimmune diseases are conditions in which your immune system mistakenly damages healthy cells in your body. Types include rheumatoid arthritis, Crohn’s disease, and some thyroid conditions. Your immune system usually protects you from diseases and infections. When it senses these pathogens, it creates specific cells to target foreign cells.
Usually, your immune system can tell the difference between foreign cells and your cells.
Some autoimmune diseases target only one organ. Type 1 diabetes damages your pancreas. Other conditions, such as systemic lupus erythematosus, or lupus, can affect your whole body.

Essential thrombocythemia is a rare genetic disorder that affects platelets, the blood cells that control bleeding. It's a rare blood disorder that happens when abnormal stem cells in your bone marrow make too many platelets. Platelets are blood cells that slow or stop bleeding by creating blood clots. Essential thrombocythemia is an acquired genetic condition, meaning it happens when certain genes mutate or change.

Hi Andrea,

That is an interesting question, as autoimmune illness and myeloproliferative neoplasm are known to co-occur in some people (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC28...).
The link is thought to be the inflammation that is common in both MPNs and autoimmune disease. Some even go as far as saying they have similar manifestations:
"Therefore, while being a clonally derived neoplasm, MPN has much in common with chronic non-cancerous inflammatory conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, and many more. MPN and chronic inflammatory disease (CID) share similar chronicity, symptoms, dependency on the immune system, environmental triggers, and treatments. "
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10...
Some time in the past I went to check the gene cards for genes triggering MPNs and there was some genetic overlap with genes that could cause autoimmune diseases.
Some of the treatments used for MPNs are also used for autoimmune disease, for example Rituximab.
Also, as they affect the bone marrow and the production of blood cells, MPNs also affect immune responses (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC91...).

So maybe there are more commonalities between MPNs and autoimmune diseases than previously thought.

Many hugs of support,
Tatiana

The LRA Elisa/ACT Biotechnology Blood Test can identify the causes of Autoimmune conditions.

Hi Andrea, and how are you these days? Hope your weekend is a pleasant one.

Interesting question that comes up here and there, and I decided to do some googling to see what I could find on whether ET is an autoimmune disease, because I don’t think it is. There are many people here with a lot of scientific knowledge on our MPNs (i.e. Steve) who probably will be more concise about it, but I found something at ncbi.nlm.nih.gov that perhaps you can look up. The subject line I will include here, but the topic is about 13 pages long:

“Primary Immune Thrombocytopenia and Essential Thrombocythemia (the ET that we refer to as an MPN - my add here): So Different and yet Somehow Similar—Cases Series and a Review of the Literature”

That is pretty much over the top of my head, but I did know that immune thrombocytopenia is an autoimmune disease.

@A myMPNteam Member How far are you from Arizona? Mayo Clinic has locations in Scottsdale, Phoenix, and Tempe.

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