Causes
Temporal arteritis is an autoimmune disease, in which the body's defense
system mistakenly attacks human tissue. It belongs to the same family of
diseases as rheumatoid arthritis. Most of these diseases are more common in
women. Autoimmune diseases in general are poorly understood. They tend to run
in families, but not so much that we can say they're inherited or genetic diseases.
Many doctors believe it takes a combination of predisposing genes and a "trigger"
infection, but attempts to find such infections in people with autoimmune disease
come up empty.