One of the first questions a newly diagnosed lupus patient often has is, “What caused me to get this awful disease?” You might start thinking that there was one thing you might have done that caused you to get it. There are so many questions on what caused your Lupus but the answer is, “We just don’t know.”
There are some things we do know. It isn’t contagious, so you can’t get it from someone through any kind of contact including sexual contact. It could be hereditary, as sometimes family members will suffer with Lupus, but just because a sibling has Lupus that is not indicator that you will have it. There are possible triggers that will cause lupus or flare-ups. These triggers include sun, medicine, smoking and being exposed to second hand smoke, stress, and certain toxins in well water.
SLE can be drug induces as discussed above.
Symptoms
1 You will have a prolonged irregular fever with a tendency to remissions at different times. You could go into remission for weeks, months or even years.
2 You may have recurrent polyarthritis, pleuritis
3 Your bone marrow may become depressed and this can result in Leukopenia, lymphopenia, moderate hypochromic anemia and thrombopenia.
4 If you get to the advanced stage, you will have vascular alterations in the skin, retina, kidneys, and other viscera.
5 You may become anorexic with weight loss and malaise.
6 You will possibly have a macular rash.
7 You may also have Discoid rash.
8 You will be sensitive to light.
9 You could develop oral ulcers.
10 You may develop renal disease.
11 There might be Neurological disease with Seizures or Psychosis (without other causes).
12 There might be Immunologic abnormalities
You will be classified as having SLE (Systemic Lupus Erythematosus) if you have any 4 or more of the above symptoms.
If you don’t have the rash, you may seem to have infectious polyarthritis, and if you have pain and swelling of your joints with pain, it will be difficult at first to not rule out rheumatic fever or rheumatoid arthritis. If you should have Leukopenia with the white blood cell count ranging between 3500 and 6000 while the polymrophonuclear leukocytes are quite reduced, then this could indicate the true nature of your disease. When the disease progresses, the hemoglobin will fall much faster than the red cell count, but not below 60 %. Your blood platelet count will fall to about 100.000, and sometimes as low as 40,000 in the more advanced stages.