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What causes lupus?

  It is beyond knowledge by now what generates autoimmune diseases. Lupus belongs to that class. Such diseases occur when the organism's immune system takes the body's own healthy tissues for bacteria or viruses and attacks them. This process is extremely damaging for many parts of the body, which become swollen. With lupus, the affected parts are: the skin, the articulations, the blood vessels, the lungs, the kidneys, the heart and the brain.

Specialists consider lupus to be potentially generated by hormonal, genetic and environmental factors. It would be incorrect to consider lupus a genetic transmitted disease, but the hereditary factor plays an important part in a person's predisposition to that disease. Other elements that may increase the risk to develop lupus are:

• * Sunlight. It is dangerous for a person with lupus to expose to sunlight, because this provokes the lesions to come to the surface of the skin and also the disease in predisposed people. Experts suppose that the light of the sun favors the expression of some particular proteins on the skin cells' surface. When this occurs, the antibodies in the immune system initialize their attack on these proteins, generating inflammation. This inflammation is further extended and favored by the fact that skin cells of lupus people die faster after being damaged than in healthy people. But this is only a theory; the exact action of the ultraviolet radiations on lupus is not totally known.
• * Some medicines generate one of the three major types of the lupus, as a result of the prolonged treatment involving these particular prescribed drugs. The drug – induced lupus is usually “attracted” and generated by medicines designed to lower blood pressure (hydralazine), by procainamide, a medicine for the heart, by chlorpromazine, which is an antipsychotic, and by ioniazid – used in the treatment of the tuberculosis. There are also other categories of medications related to the apparition of lupus: medicines for arthritis, for ulcers, beta-blockers or even antibiotics, like mynocicline. Months and even years of constant may pass before the actual apparition of drugs – induced lupus. This type of lupus is very rare and, as a particularity, it affects mostly men because they are usually more predisposed to disorders that demand to be treated on long term. Also atypical for lupus is, with drug induced lupus, the fact that the interruption of the treatment involving the trigger medicine brings also the disappearance of the symptoms. The patient usually takes a short term treatment based on corticosteroids and NSAIDs.
• * Hormones. Estrogen and other feminine hormones are considered responsible for the SLE in women by the specialists. That should partly explain the obvious difference of systemic lupus erythematosus frequency in men and women. Menstruation, contraceptives, hormonal treatment or pregnancy worsen the lupus of many women, according to their own declarations. But trials and studies performed not only by the SELENA (the Safety of Estrogens in Lupus Erythematosus National Assessment) but also by other institutions failed to prove that women at their menopause are more at risk for severe relapses or that birth control pills are difficult to tolerate by women with lupus.
• * Infection. In case a person is predisposed to develop lupus, infections of bacterial or viral nature may provoke the actual disease. Especially Epstein – Barr – the cause of mononucleosis – seems to trigger this condition.

Lupus has also been linked to other factors such as stress, some aliments, aspartame, breast enlargement with silicon, dental fillings using mercury, or chemicals. But when it comes to the causes of lupus, nothing can be known for sure.