Along with various categories of diseases, there are ailments in which the body cells attack its own cell. They are the auto-immune diseases which have varying symptoms like fatigue, achy muscles, low-grade fever, hair loss, rashes, etc. The symptoms get worse at chronic stages. However, if the signs of the diseases aren’t ignored while in acute stages, the effects can be minimized to a bearable extent. Tracking of the changes caused due to any of these suspected diseases should be started from the basic things like indigestion, low immunity, minor skin problems, etc. so that the disease can be diagnosed and to enjoy the benefits of early treatment.
Symptom Tracker serves the purpose of monitoring your daily diet, physical activities like a number of steps, medications, etc. and warns you if you are likely to fall prey to any deficiency that can lead to disease. It also helps you to keep a record of your blood pressure, sugar, platelets counts, etc. and aware you about abnormal fluctuations in your body. It uses the analytic representation of your health records, which makes it easy to decide the right amount of nutrients or physical exercises to be included in order to adjust the major variations in your body.
What is Lupus Erythematosus?
Lupus Erythematosus is one of the autoimmune diseases in which the body targets its own body tissues, causes symptoms related to dermatological, cardiovascular, reproductive system, etc. The antibodies that the body produces to fight the pathogens from outside is mistakenly utilized to attack the own healthy tissues of the body. Two to seven out of every ten thousand are witnessed to suffer from this disease. The main cause of the ailment is still unclear. This is the reason why Lupus is incurable. All you can do it is to endure a lifetime treatment in order to fight with the disease. However, like every other disease if it is found out early, then the worse scenarios can be avoided.
What are the primary symptoms observed in the disease?
As Lupus is caused due to the autoantibodies (antibodies killing its own host tissues), the symptoms can be seen affecting multiple organs at multiple stages of the disease.
• The probability being 70%, lupus can cause skin inflammations at both acute and chronic stages. Thick red scaly patches on the skin are common in patients of discoid lupus. Acute lupus cause rashes to the skin, and subacute lupus cause red patches with different edges. So, the kind of skin inflammation can also help us to be primary decide which type of lupus the patient is suffering from.
• Minor as joint pains and major as rheumatoid arthritis can also be added in the list of symptoms.
• Pericarditis, which is inflammation of the outer lining of the heart, is a common sign of the disease.
• Abnormal hair loss regularly is a common symptom.
• Slow healing of wounds due to low platelets count is common. Children are likely to be suffered from anemia.
• Pain in the chest due to the disturbed outer lining of the heart.
• Numbing of fingers or limbs due to the poor blood circulation of blood throughout the body.
• Lupus can cause a reduction in lungs volume, which can cause problems in normal breathing.
• Patients with lupus often have ‘Dried’ eyes. Medication used for treating the diseases can also cause characters in the eyes.
• The urine may contain blood or excreted protein. However, no pain is left during the excretion.
• Lupus increases the chances of miscarriages. The patient has to go through a lot of endurance if diagnosed during the time of maternity.
How is the disease diagnosed?
When the symptoms in acute stages are carefully examined, the confirmation and the treatment are done accordingly. Some of the indications of the diseases are given below:
• Butterfly rash or the Malar Rash is a prominent symptom.
• Skin is vulnerable to sunlight or the Ultraviolet rays and reacts by causing rashes.
• Due to weaker immunity, joints and muscles get swollen, leading to arthritis.
• Urine has blood or protein that can indicate Lupus as a disease.
• Inflammation of brain tissues called the lupus cerebritis is also a common sight during the examination.
• Due to autoantibodies, abnormally low immunity is observed, which is an indication of the disease. Formation of autoantibodies can be confirmed by performing the ANA (Antinuclear antibodies) test.
• Basic conditions like low blood constituents’ count. Slow healing of the wounds due to platelets or lower WBCs can make the body prone to illness, fever with shivers, etc.
What are the treatment methods?
As the cause that can help in creating an antidote of the diseases is still unclear, this disease remains incurable. However, some treating methods can help to combat the disease and survive the effects.
• As dermatological problems are very a common problem for patients with Lupus Erythematosus, it is advisable to wear sunscreens, SPF 50 should be preferred.
• NSAIDs such as Aspirin, naproxen, etc. are the kinds of mind drugs can be taken to reduce muscle and joint pains.
• Common painkillers can be used to reduce stomach pain, ulcers, etc.
• Plaquenil is effective for restoring immunity or even in joint and muscular pains.
• Cytotoxic drugs are used in chemotherapies are also used in the treatment for lupus with much lower doses. However, they can massively affect the immune system of the body and can lead to depression, especially during pregnancy.
• Plasmapheresis is a common method used to pass the blood through a filtration process and thus removing the antibodies so that it cannot attack the host tissues. This also means the overall immunity of the body is no longer stable.
Such diseases which are technically incurable needs extra care as the only thing that is controllable is its effects. You can track symptoms of Lupus in order to take care for the disease. Proper medication, healthy diet, adequate physical exercises, etc. is something that needs to be work upon. Self- monitoring and regular health check-up is the best solution to problems related to any type of illness.
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