Immune-mediated diseases — where the immune system attacks the dog own tissues — cause significant welfare harm and require complex management, with increasing prevalence linked to genetics, environment, and the microbiome.
Immune-mediated diseases in dogs cause welfare harm through the disease itself and through immunosuppressive treatment side effects. IMHA patients experience acute anemia causing weakness, collapse, and distress alongside the disease experience. Pemphigus patients have extensive painful skin lesions. Polyarthritis causes reluctance to move, vocalization, and depression. Treatment with immunosuppressive drugs reduces immune-mediated destruction but creates vulnerability to infection and other side effects. The welfare management of these conditions requires balancing disease control against treatment side effects — monitoring quality of life throughout. Early diagnosis and appropriate treatment achieves good-quality remission in many cases. Breed selection that avoids high-risk breeds, and working with breeders who screen for autoimmune predisposition, reduces the population-level welfare burden.