World Lupus Day is a global healthcare event commemorated every year on May 10 to raise awareness about this chronic, autoimmune disease. The day was created by Lupus Canada in 2004 to raise awareness of this lesser-known disease that can have devastating effects on sufferers and their families
Approximately 5 million people worldwide, with 1.5 million of them living in the United States alone.
What is Lupus?
Lupus is a health condition that affects the immune system. This autoimmune disease can damage any part of the body (skin, joints, and/or organs inside the body). Usually, the immune system produces antibodies that protect the body from these invaders. Lupus causes the body to secrete autoantibodies to attack and destroy healthy tissue.
In simpler words, this disease is caused when the immune system attacks its own tissue, resulting in pain and inflammation of the body tissues.
Lupus can affect the body in a variety of ways, particularly with inflammation, joint pain, fever, stiffness, rashes, headache, fatigue, dry eyes, chest pain, shortness of breath and more.
5 Facts about the disease that you must know:
Lupus was named after the Latin word for “wolf” when it was used in the 13th century to describe facial lesions that looked like a wolf’s bite.
Lupus is typically a “young person’s" disease, as the symptoms of the disease tend to develop between the ages of 15 and 44 and it lasts for the rest of the person’s life.
Some of the most serious ways that lupus impacts the organs is through kidney disease and heart disease, which can lead to critical illness and even death.
90% of people living with lupus are women. Although men can get lupus, it is less common.
African Americans, Asians, Hispanics/Latinos, Pacific Islanders and Native Americans are two to three times more likely to have lupus than are Caucasians
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