People have used ‘lupus’ to describe a disease since the Middle Ages. Possibly the first recorded use of the word ‘lupus’ to identify a skin disease was in AD 855, when Herbernus, the archbishop of Tours, France, wrote in his Miracles of St. Martin.
The oldest evidence of a lupus-like disease is the mummy of a 14 year-old girl who died in AD 890 in Peru. Examination of the mummy shows evidence of hair loss, leathery skin, lung disease and inflammation around the heart.
Systemic lupus erythematosus patients who have symptoms of achiness, fatigue, pain on taking a deep breath, fever, swollen glands, and signs of swollen joints or rashes but whose internal organs are not involve (for example, the heart, lungs, kidneys, or liver) are said to have non-organ-threatening disease.
Lupus erythematosus develops when the body becomes allergic to itself. The body overreacts to an unknown stimulus and makes too many antibodies, or proteins directed against body tissue. Thus, lupus is called an autoimmune disease.
Nearly four million Americans have lupus; that’s more than have AIDS, cerebral palsy, multiple sclerosis, sciklep0cell anemia, and cystic fibrosis combined.
What Is Lupus?
