jacobhuntI’m a Scientist is like school science lessons meet the X Factor! School students choose which scientist gets a prize of $1000 to communicate their work.
Scientists and students talk on this website. They both break down barriers, have fun and learn. But only the students get to vote.
This zone is the Organs Zone. It has scientists studying health and disease in various parts of our bodies. Who gets the prize? YOU decide!
This sounds like Yashar’s speciality! But as a matter of interest…whenever you see “itis” on the end of a word, it means “inflammation of” (from Ancient Greek and more modern Latin). So appendicitis is inflammation of the appendix. Bronchitis is inflammation of the bronchi (the air passages to the lungs). Otitis is inflammation of the ear! Inflammation is pretty non-specific though…it can be caused by all sorts of things, including dust, bacteria, viruses, and your own immune system getting out of control.
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Well i hope it is all better now!!
Definitely a question for Yashar, but there’s lots of instances when your body attacks itself and we still don’t know why it happens, mostly!
They are called “auto immune disorders” and some that you might have heard of are Grave’s Disease, Lupus, Rheumatoid arthritis, Chron’s disease and Type 1 diabetes.
Here’s a huge list of them, and some more information from wikipedia!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autoimmune_disease
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I had to look this up for a second, as I’d never heard of iritis, inflammation of your iris!
So iritis is a type of Uveitis. Carina is right when she says anything with “-itis” on the end of a word means “inflammation of”. So in this case you had an inflammation iris, the “muscle” at the front of your eye that determines how much light is focused into the eye, also referred to as your eye colour. A quick search gave me this:
“The most common form of uveitis is anterior uveitis, which involves inflammation in the front part of the eye. It is often called iritis because it usually only affects the iris, the colored part of the eye. The inflammation may be associated with autoimmune diseases, but most cases occur in healthy people. The disorder may affect only one eye. It is most common in young and middle-aged people”.
So the thing I’d take away from this is that you’re not alone, it can occur in many people. It isn’t always linked with autoimmune disease, but even if it is, you shouldn’t freak out! You should listen to your doctor, and can even see an ophthalmologist (eye doctor – specialist). He probably gave you steroid anti-inflammatory eye drops or something alike to decrease inflammation around that area.
There are a lot of things that can cause iritis. Anything from an injury and infections all the way to autoimmune disease can cause iritis. But look, don’t go picking the worst of these and worrying about it. The treatment worked. Let’s hope it doesn’t come back
Hope that helps 😀
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Really nice responses from our excellent scientists!
Hey jacob – I wondered how did you discover it? Was your eye itchy or painful? And yeah hope it’s all cleared up now!
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Hope you feel better soon Jacob!
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