Lupus

Lupus is a chronic disorder that can affect your skin, joints, and internal organs. As an autoimmune disease, it triggers your immune system to attack healthy tissue, causing inflammation that can lead to serious problems over time, like kidney damage, cardiovascular disease, and other complications. Lupus can be hard to diagnose because symptoms vary between people and may mimic other diseases, but experienced providers can identify the disease and recommend a treatment plan.

Penn Medicine’s autoimmune disease care specialists are skilled at diagnosing and treating lupus. Our rheumatologists work with experts from a variety of disciplines to perform a thorough evaluation. After making a diagnosis, our experts create a care plan that can calm your symptoms and help protect your organs from damage. Lupus is manageable with the right therapies, and our specialists can get you the treatments that help you keep doing what you love.

Symptoms of lupus depend on the areas of your body being affected by the disease. This may include your skin, joints, blood, kidneys, heart, or lungs. Lupus symptoms can be mild or severe enough to affect your daily life. You’re also likely to have periods when symptoms get worse, known as flares, and times when they go away, called remission.

Signs of lupus may include:

• Joint or muscle pain
• Skin rashes that get worse with sun exposure, including a rash in a butterfly shape across your cheeks and nose
• Chest pain, including when you breathe deeply
• White or blue fingers or toes when it’s cold or when you’re under stress, called Raynaud’s syndrome
• Fever and fatigue
• Headaches
• Blood clots

Other lupus symptoms may include:

• Shortness of breath
• Swelling in your face, arms, legs, hands, or feet
• Swollen glands
• Hair loss
• Confusion and memory loss
• Sensitivity to light
• Dry eyes

Lupus can also result in other health conditions, like heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, osteoporosis, anemia, seizures, and other health issues.

The cause of lupus isn’t exactly clear, but research has found that some things may trigger the onset of the disease.

Lupus symptoms may occur because of:

• Certain gene changes, known as genetic mutations
• Your body’s reaction to hormones, like estrogen
• Environmental triggers, including air pollution, smoking cigarettes, infections, medications, and other factors in your environment

Lupus can be hereditary. It’s more common in people who have a family member with lupus or another autoimmune disease. The disease also occurs more often in people assigned female at birth and who are ages 15 to 44. Early signs of lupus in women can vary but may include swollen joints or fatigue. People of certain ethnic backgrounds are also more likely to have lupus, including African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and Pacific Islanders.

There’s no cure for lupus, but your health care team can create a treatment plan that helps relieve your symptoms and prevent flares. If lupus symptoms are caused by a drug you’re taking, your doctor can help you find another medication that won’t cause your symptoms. If you have SLE, cutaneous, or neonatal lupus, medications can lower your immune system response, helping to reduce your symptoms and protect your organs from damage. These medications may include oral drugs, skin creams, injections, and intravenous infusions. Often it takes a combination of drugs to manage lupus, and you may need treatment for complications, like heart disease or osteoporosis.

At Penn Medicine, our top-rated rheumatologists work with other specialists—like kidney doctors (nephrologists), lung doctors (pulmonologists), dermatologists, and others—to give you a diagnosis you can trust. Because lupus is a lifelong disease, our providers help you manage it long-term, using innovative treatments that include the latest available biologics, immunosuppressants, and other drugs.

Your care is also coordinated among your other specialists. We have an extensive network of specialists who can address all of your lupus symptoms with a range of services from cognitive behavioral therapy and pain psychology to ophthalmology and hematology care.

And as active researchers, our experts drive progress in lupus treatment by conducting clinical trials. We provide every tool possible to help you stay healthy while managing lupus symptoms.