Dear ramakentesh:
AS speaks: "My name is LEGION, for we are MANY."
I see so many people counting up their diseases like medals on a uniform, like nobody has MORE diseases than ME.
However, I see AS as ONE disease with ONE CAUSE and only ONE mechanism explains not only the common (salient) symptoms of AS, but also symptoms of other 'diseases' which are really just 'conditions' related to primary AS; sequelae.
The chances of having two distinctly different autoimmune diseases is the product of their fractional probabilities; they are "possible" but very improbable. Doctors obfuscate the problem by using descriptive names which become new disease labels for the same disease: AS.
I did not have asthma as a separate disease, but the asthma was just one of many RESULTS of my AS. Ditto iritis, periostitis (shin splints), renal calculi (kidney stones), plantar fasciitis, etc etc. Yes, once I got rid of the AS the asthma also went away and it had begun at the zenith of my AS (even before NSAIDs--one of the few bad sequelae I don't blame on NSAIDs!).
All of the misdiagnoses will be equally progressive as the AS, typically.
About two percent of people with AS will also develop RA later, but most people with AS will have many indications of psoriatic arthritis, psoriasis in general and any or most ReAs, too.
Some actual genetic information can be indicative:
HLA B27 (B7CREG, B39, B60 and a few other MHCs): AS
HLA DR4/DR1: RA
HLA DR2/DR3: SLE
HLA B51: Behcet's Disease
There are several others unrelated to the current discussion, and this might not be the current level of our technology, but a 'genetic counselor' could better help determine our risks.
HEALTH,
John
