LUPUS (SYSTEMIC LUPUS ERYTHEMATOSUS) - INTRODUCTION
While it isn't a gynecological problem, nor is it solely a women's disease, I have included it here because lupus affects women disproportionately. There are about nine cases of lupus among women to every one case among men; African-American women have about three times the number of cases as Caucasian women, and younger women (from the teens to the mid-thirties) are more often affected than older ones. No one knows the cause of this disorder, but it is a so-called autoimmune condition in which the body's own disease-fighting system turns and acts upon its own healthy cells. Dr. Robert Lahita, chairman of the board of directors for the Lupus Foundation of America, describes lupus as the opposite of AIDS, in which the immune system totally fails. With lupus, the immune system goes into overdrive.
Lupus causes a wide range of symptoms, from the more mild—including skin roughness and rashes, joint swelling and pain, sun sensitivity, oral ulcers and abnormal blood measurements of certain immune factors—to serious kidney and other organ damage, and problems with the nervous system.
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General health
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