Lupus disease in an autoimmune disease. This is a disease where your immune system attacks your body. What is lupus disease? Lupus is the result of an unbalanced immune system.Lupus can attack any major tissue or organ in the human body. This includes the brain and nervous system, heart and lungs, kidneys and renal system, reproductive system, nasal and oral, blood disorders, eyes, skin, gastrointestinal, and musculoskeletal systems.

What is lupus disease? Lupus can effect men or women, but is much more likely in women. Lupus effects women between the ages of 10 to 50 years old. Lupus is more common in African-Americans and Asians. Medical science believes there are some links to heredity. But some people that get lupus have no family history of the disease. That makes it hard for even the doctors to answer the question, “What is lupus disease?”

With the long list of areas that can be effected it is not hard to imagine that there are a lot of symptoms for lupus. People that tell you what is lupus disease by using symptoms, have a large list to go through.

Swelling and joint pain are very common. Many people complain about extreme fatigue. People with lupus often experience unexplained weight fluctuation. Skin abnormalities and lesions that appear to worsen in sunlight. Skin may become very easy to bruise. Your toes or fingers will get discolored, white or blue, when they get cold, or when you are stressed.

One of the reasons that the question, “What is lupus disease” gets asked, is because of someone seeing the lupus butterfly rash. The butterfly rash is actually one of the most common symptoms of lupus. This butterfly-shaped rash appears on the face and often covers the bridge of the nose. Not as easily seen, but common none the less, are mouth sores. Hair loss, also known as alopecia, is also a sign of lupus. People suffering form lupus are many times short of breath, with accompanying chest pains. Dry eye, memory loss and depression or anxiety.

What is Lupus Disease and What Does Treatment Consist Of?

Although doctors can treat lupus, there is however no official treatment for the disease lupus. What this means is that doctors treat, or manage, the symptoms. This managing of the symptoms is primarily done using pharmaceuticals.

People with a mild case of lupus may only need sporadic treatment with an anti-inflammatory medication whereas more serious symptoms, such as kidney failure, may require dialysis treatments for the rest of their life.

So what is a good treatment for one patient, may not be good for another. Lupus is so varied that no two cases of lupus are identical.

And it is curious to note that there have been no new drugs approved specifically for the treatment of lupus in the last 40 years. However the quality of life, and the life expectancy, of lupus patients have both increased. After being diagnosed with lupus, a patient following their doctors recommendations should live 20 years, or even longer. And most will be able to live a normal life.

What is Lupus Disease is not nearly as frightening as it once was. So now you have part of the answers to, “What is Lupus Disease?”