Lupus is a disease in which part of the immune system becomes overactive and attacks the body's own tissues, damaging the performance of the skin, joints, kidneys and other organs. The condition can make life a misery with symptoms such as rash, extreme fatigue, joint pain, muscle aches, anaemia and general malaise. It can also cause problems with pregnancy. Lupus was once considered a life-threatening disease, but in recent years, improved understanding and more sophisticated drug treatments provide better outcomes, and the quality of life of those with the disease has been greatly improved.

The majority of those with lupus are women of childbearing age and Living with Lupus includes material on those planning a family. It also covers:

different types of lupus

diagnostic testing

the organs affected by lupus

treatment options

related conditions and complications

self-help and improving quality of life.

In this accessible, informative and straightforward guide, Philippa Pigache has provided an invaluable aid to understanding lupus and its management.

Contents

Introduction — the wolf and the butterfly

Recognizing lupus — the wolf's spoor

Who develops lupus, where and why — the prey of the wolf

The causes of lupus — finding the wolf s lair

Diagnosing lupus — on the trail of the wolf 1: in the surgery

Diagnosing lupus — on the trail of the wolf 2: in the laboratory

Treating lupus with drugs I — keeping the wolf from the door

Treating lupus with drugs 2 — call the huntsman

DIY lupus management — taming the wolf

Seven lupus-like conditions — sheep (and goats) in wolf's clothing

Lupus and pregnancy — the wolf and the ewe

'Foretell the future' — will the wolf one day become extinct?

What is Lupus? Ask the medical experts and they will tell you it is an autoimmune disease. Its full name is systemic lupus erythematosus, or SLE, though we will be referring to it as 'lupus' for short. The 'systemic' indicates that it affects many organs — the whole system. The 'erythematosus' — from the Greek word for red — describes a certain kind of rash and refers to the part of the body most noticeably affected in lupus: the skin. Until the nineteenth century, lupus was thought of only as a skin disease. In fact the name was almost certainly applied to other diseases affecting the skin on the face, not to what we know as lupus today.

lupus' is the Latin for wolf and the name was coined seven centuries ago by the medieval physicians Rogerius and Paracelsus to describe facial lesions that 'ate' into the skin, and looked like a wolf bite. These days, doctors think it more likely that such lesions were caused by a form of tuberculosis, rather than what we now call lupus.

• About the author Philippa Pigache has been a journalist and writer for more than thirty years, starting on local newspapers and women's magazines, moving to national newspapers, radio and television and, more recently, becoming a freelance medical science writer. She has worked on the Sunday Times, Daily Mail and the Guardian, and for ITN and BBC science features.

  She started to specialize in writing about medicine chiefly because she was married to a doctor. (Her own educational background is in modem languages and the theatre.) She has contributed to consumer health pages and journals for health professionals for twenty years and has won awards for her medical journalism and also for her fiction. She is currently the honorary secretary of the Medical Journalists' Association and editor of their journal, the MJA News.

  She has written consumer health books on arthritis and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Her first book for Sheldon Press, Living with Rheumatoid Arthritis, was commended in the 2005 MJA Open Consumer Book Awards. She has two children, three grandchildren and three cats. She lives in Sussex and paints and gardens in her spare time.