Until recently, I felt confident telling people I have an autoimmune disease. After all, any inflammatory arthritis is clearly autoimmune, right? My body is attacking itself and causing inflammation, so it must be autoimmune. Wrong. I was surprised to learn about a new category of conditions that has been identified: autoinflammatory. Knowing whether spondyloarthritis is autoimmune or autoinflammatory will be important for finding new treatments. But what does autoinflammatory mean? Immunity overview The immune system has two parts: innate immunity and adaptive immunity. Innate immunity isn’t specific to any one threat that your body might face. The innate immune system includes barriers like skin and mucus as well as cells…