Your body has its own system for fighting off sickness called the immune system,
but sometimes it doesn’t work correctly.
When this happens, a person may have an autoimmune e[say: aw-toe-ih-myoon] disease.
 Lupus [say:loo-pus] is one of those diseases.

A healthy immune system is like an army that can protect you against germs and illness.
It makes antibodies [say: an-tih-bah-deez], which are special chemicals that fight infections.
But with a disease like lupus, the army gets confused and begins attacking the healthy cells in your body.
It does this by making autoantibodies [say: aw-toe-an-tih-bod eez], which are antibodies that attack the body’s normal cells.

People with lupus may not look sick, but they may fell run down, weak, or nauseated.
Their joints may hurt and they may have swollen glands.

There are three types of lupus:

(1)  Systemic lupus erythematosus [say: si-stem-ik-loo-pus eruh-thee-muh-toh-sus] is also
 called SLE and is the type that most people mean when they talk about lupus.
 It’s the most serious form of lupus. SLE can affect the skin, joints, tendons, and
other body organs like the brain, heart, lungs and kidneys.

 

(2)  Discoid lupus [say: dis-koyd loo-pus ] is a skin disease that causes a rash on the face, neck, scalp and ears.
It’s a much rarer form of lupus than SLE. It doesn’t affect other organs the way SLE can, but the rash can leave scars.
Some people with discoid lupus get SLE later on.

(3) Drug induced lupus is caused by a reaction to some kind of medicines.
Drug induced lupus affects the body in many of the same ways that SLE does.
Once a person stops taking the medication the symptoms often go away.