An Overview on The Diagnosis and Treatment of Lupus
Lupus erythematosus can be of five major types: systemic, discoid, subacute cutaneous, neonatal and drug – induced systemic. The most frequent of the five, systemic lupus erythematosus, is also the most severe because it also damages other vital organs like the heart, lungs, kidneys and even the blood cells.
SLE is an autoimmune, chronic disease. The chronic character is given by the fact that it alternates periods of remission with violent flares and the patient will have to live with it for the rest of his/her life. The autoimmune character is given by the attack of the immune system on the body healthy tissues, which it mistakenly takes for foreign bodies.
This disease evolves from easy to severe. It is necessary to follow the proper treatment, in order to control the evolution of the disease and its symptoms. Lupus may severely damage the internal organs, so both the treatment and the monitoring should be permanent.
Lupus may develop a large variety of symptoms. These symptoms sometimes enter remission only to violently return after a while. The most frequently encountered are: skin rash – usually due to solar exposure, fever, inflammation and pain of the articulations and fatigue. Less common but also possible to occur are hair loss and mouth sores. Nervous system symptoms, such as migraines also accompany lupus after a while. Remission represents the period in which these symptoms disappear; their return is known as flare or relapse. There are extremely rare the cases in which a complete disappearance of the symptoms may occur.
Diagnosing lupus takes time and it is not easy to perform. There is no particular test to exactly determine its presence, so there is a series of steps to be taken in order to obtain a correct lupus diagnosis: physical examination, patient history and blood tests. The easiest way to diagnose it is for the patient to have the characteristic symptoms and also positive results for antinuclear antibodies, which indicates an autoimmune disease.
Lupus cannot be treated. However, the symptoms and the evolution may be kept under control. There are two components, in order to achieve that: the patient should take good care of himself/ herself through sufficient rest, staying out of the light of sun and exercises; the other component consists in the actual treatment involving antimalarials and NSAIDs, which help in the management of the symptoms.
In case of extremely severe symptoms and very high risks of vital organs damage, corticosteroids and immunosuppressants are prescribed.