Category Archives: articles

The term “lupus fog” is almost universally known to people with lupus. The phrase reflects the difficulty that you may have in completing once-familiar tasks such as remembering names and dates, keeping appointments, balancing your checkbook or processing your thoughts. Called “cognitive dysfunction” or “cognitive impairment,” this inability to recall information can be extremely frustrating.Continue reading “How lupus affects memory”

The biggest challenge to determining how many people have lupus is first deciding on what constitutes a case of lupus. There are multiple forms of lupus with overlapping features – systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), cutaneous lupus, drug-induced lupus, neonatal lupus, pediatric lupus, and late-onset lupus. There are subcategories for specific organ systems impacted by lupus,Continue reading “Why It’s Difficult to Determine Exactly How Many People are Living with Lupus in the U.S.”

Brian Kaplan was a 14-year-old high school freshman when he was diagnosed with lupus kidney disease. His aunt had died from lupus years before, so the diagnosis felt decidedly grave. Kaplan was prescribed a course of cyclophosphamide, a chemotherapy drug developed for treating various types of cancer that is used off-label to try to haltContinue reading “When lupus targets the kidneys”

Because lupus can affect so many different parts of the body, it can cause a lot of different symptoms. And many people with lupus don’t have all the symptoms. Common signs and symptoms of lupus The most common lupus symptoms (which are the same for men and women) are: Many people with lupus also have problems thatContinue reading “Lupus symptoms”

Many (but not all) scientists believe that lupus develops in response to a combination of factors both inside and outside the body, including hormones, genetics, and environment. Hormones Hormones are the body’s messengers. They regulate many of the body’s functions. Because nine of every 10 occurrences of lupus are in females, researchers have looked atContinue reading “What causes lupus?”

Lupus is a chronic (long-term) disease that can cause inflammation and pain in any part of your body. It’s an autoimmune disease, which means that your immune system — the body system that usually fights infections — attacks healthy tissue instead. Lupus most commonly affects your:  Because lupus affects many parts of the body, it canContinue reading “What is lupus?”

A lupus “flare” or “flare up” is when your lupus symptoms worsen and you feel ill as a result. The formal definition of a flare is:  A measurable increase in disease activity in one or more organ systems involving new or worse clinical signs and symptoms and/or lab measurements. The increase must be considered clinicallyContinue reading “What is a lupus flare?”

From white violence to the rise of exclusive swim clubs, people of color have long faced barriers to American swimming pools. In the 1920s, swimmers cool off at the Fairgrounds Pool in Saint Louis, Missouri. The enormous pool could hold tens of thousands of people—but was originally only open to whites. When the pool attemptedContinue reading “Public swimming pools are still haunted by segregation’s legacy”

This week we will be taking a closer look into what exactly is Lupus and how it effects your body. As I’ve said in the past, its hard to confirm but when it is there is a lot to understand. So I hope this series helps to close the gap of understanding if you orContinue reading “Lupus Week”

Audre Lorde was born Audrey Geraldine Lorde in New York City to immigrants from Grenada, an island nation in the Caribbean. Considered an intelligent and precocious student, she began writing poetry in high school. After a poem she wrote was rejected for a class assignment, she submitted it to Seventeen magazine and it became her first professional publication.Continue reading “Audre Lorde”