the.com/lupus
Lupus is a chronic illness in which the immune system mistakenly attacks the body's own healthy tissue.
means A chronic autoimmune disease in which the immune system attacks the body's own healthy tissue, causing inflammation that can affect skin, joints, kidneys, and other organs.
from From Latin lupus, meaning 'wolf.' The name dates to medieval medicine, when a certain severe facial skin lesion was described as looking 'wolf-bitten' — some accounts say the ulcerations resembled a wolf's gnawing, others that the butterfly-shaped facial rash evoked a wolf's markings. The term stuck and widened over centuries to cover the systemic autoimmune disease we now call lupus, long after doctors stopped thinking an actual wolf had anything to do with it.
- meaning
- latin for wolf, named for facial rash
- diagnosis time
- average six years, often dismissed as stress
- demographics
- 90% of patients are women
- house md fact
- never actually lupus, except once