how should we treat lupus?

Lupus is an inflammatory disease of the connective tissue.

Lupus can cause symptoms from many organ systems such as skin, joints, blood vessels and kidneys. Lupus should not be symptomatic, but the causes of the inflammatory condition must be clarified in order to treat it properly.

Virus load, heavy metals and as well as environmental toxins have all been linked to Lupus.

Assistant Professor of UC Division of Immunology, Allergy and Rheumatology, Dr. Gulati, says it is significant that in a study looking at Lupus occurrence in identical twins, clinical manifestation of the disease occurred in both siblings in only 24 percent of cases. "It is more likely that genetic risk factors along with environmental impacts, play a crucial role in the Lupus development," says Dr. Gulati.

What is critical to understand here is also how certain toxins allow the virus Epstein-Barr to attack and thus studies also connect this virus with onset of Lupus. But rather than treating the virus itself, we need to pinpoint what is causing the virus to attack - and then we can talk about treating the actual underlying cause.

References

Curr Opin Rheumatol. 2016 Sep; 28(5): 497–505.

Lupus. 1994 Dec;3(6):449-53.

Int J Mol Sci. 2014 Sep; 15(9): 16043–16056.