Your immune system turns against your body's own cells in an autoimmune disease  

• Normally your immune system or disease-fighting cells work to protect you from disease    
• Destroys harmful viruses, bacteria and germs invading your body
• Something goes wrong with your immune system in lupus
• Health cells and tissues are attacked
• Causes inflammation, pain, and damage in parts of the body
•  No known cure for lupus but there are effective treatments
• 80-90% of people with lupus can expect to live a normal life span

Types of Lupus  

• Systemic lupus erythematosus  ( SLE )
• Most common type
• May affect joints, skin, kidneys, lungs, heart, blood vessels, nervous system, blood, and brain
• Flares and remissions may occur
• Every year studies report more than 16,000 new cases
• Discoid lupus erthyematosus (DLE)
• Causes a skin rash that doesn’t go away
• Subacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus
• Causes skin sores on parts of the body exposed to sun

Lupus may be hard for your health care provider to diagnosis

• Often mistaken for another disease
• May take a long time to diagnose
• Develops slowly in most people
• Symptoms come and go
• Signs of lupus differ from one person to another
• Most people affected only in a few parts of their body
• Disease of flares and remission
• Flares-when symptoms worsen and you feel ill
• Remission-when symptoms improve and you feel better

Your doctor will decide how to best manage and treat your symptoms

• Early detection, treatment, and patient education help to control lupus
• Be sure to tell your health care provider right away about any new symptoms
• You may need to see special kinds of doctors to help treat the many symptoms of lupus
• Your treatment may include using medicines

You should always be under a doctor’s care even when your symptoms are mild.