Lupus Diagnosis and Treatment
Lupus is a disease that happens when your body's system attacks its own tissues and organs. The inflammation caused by lupus can affect many various systems of the body, including the lungs, brain, kidneys, skin, joints, heart, and blood cells.
The signs and symptoms of lupus are often almost like other conditions, then the disease will be difficult to diagnose. The foremost obvious sign of lupus disease could be a facial rash resembling a butterfly's wings that open on both cheeks and is seen in many cases of lupus.
Although its genetic transmission isn't yet fully understood, available information supports that there could also be a familial predisposition to lupus.
Lupus exacerbations in patients; The infection is triggered by the employment of certain medications or maybe sunlight. There's no definitive treatment for lupus yet, and also the treatment methods used target controlling the symptoms of the disease.
Lupus Diagnosis
Lupus disease diagnosis is created with the assistance of some blood tests along with clinical symptoms. Complete blood count, kidney tests, chest X-ray, LE cell, anti DNA and ANA are checked within the patients. If the physician deems it necessary and in step with the suspected organ involvement, he may order more tests.
It is very difficult to diagnose in patients who initially don't show typical disease symptoms. SLE will be confused with many tissue diseases.
How Is Lupus Treated?
The following treatment methods are often employed in the treatment of lupus:
Lifestyle changes: additionally to clinical treatments, it's vital for patients to take care of certain lifestyle changes for the success of the treatment. Accordingly, patients are advised to stick to the following:
- Avoid direct contact with sunlight; When going outside, sunscreen creams and sunglasses should be used.
- Adequate diet habits should be gained.
- The amount of salt within the daily diet should be reduced.
- Certain vitamins and minerals, like calciferol, calcium and phosphorus, should be supplemented.
- Regular exercise should be done.
- Habits like smoking should be stopped.
Drug therapy: The drugs employed in lupus disease are directly associated with the severity of the disease. The main goal of those drugs is to alleviate the symptoms of the disease, to suppress the system, to stop exacerbations and to forestall the event of complications. Accordingly, patients could also be prescribed non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (such as ibuprofen, naproxen), steroids (such as prednisone), antimalarial drugs (such as hydroxychloroquine), immunosuppressants (such as methotrexate), and biological agents (such as anti-TNF blockers).
