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By: Ikedi Ani-okoye.

About Lupus

Lupus is a disease that forces the immune system to attack healthy tissue. It affects about 1.5 million Americans. Ninety percent of these Americans are women. Lupus is a very difficult disease to diagnose because each lupus patient can display different symptoms. The number of symptoms can also vary between patients. There are 4 different categories of lupus. Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) constitute about 70 percent of the cases of lupus. About 15 percent of the people who have SLE exhibit symptoms during their teen years.

Lupus in Women

Lupus occurs more frequently in women in that nine out of ten people with lupus are women. People of all races can have the disease. However, Lupus is also more common in African American women, as well as Hispanic, Asian and Native American females.

Discoid form of lupus

The discoid form of lupus affects only somebody' s skin. To diagnose this kind of lupus, the doctor has to do a biopsy of the rash that you are suffering. Because discoid lupus affects only the skin in form of a rash, this is the only proper way to diagnose lupus. The biopsy of the skin affected by lupus will show some abnormalities that otherwise will not be found in a type of skin that has not been affected by lupus.

Drug-induced lupus

Drug-induced lupus is a rare form of the disease that occurs as a result of medication intolerance. This type of lupus produces symptoms that are very similar to systemic lupus erythematosus: rash, unexplained fever, pulmonary and coronary affections, and arthritis. However, unlike the systemic form of the disease, drug-induced lupus doesn’t involve kidney impairments and often disappears as soon as the causative drugs are no longer administered.

CONCLUSION

Lupus generates a wide range of symptoms and people with the disease experience them at different intensities. Lupus involves abnormal activity of the immune system. The dysfunctional immune system produces antibodies that turn against healthy body cells and tissues (antinuclear antibodies). Some antibodies produced by the dysfunctional immune system can even alter the body’s genetic material (anti-DNA antibodies).