Lupus is a chronic inflammatory disease attributed to an autoimmune response within the body. When this autoimmune response occurs, the body creates natural antibodies in response to healthy tissue, believing that healthy tissue is a foreign substance. For parents who care for a child who is suffering from lupus, it is important to understand not only the treatment options available but the very basic classifications of lupus.
As a general rule, there are four distinguished types of lupus; systemic, discoid, drug-induced and neonatal. For a child, any of these complications may be present. For most patients, and healthcare professionals, lupus is classified as systemic until such time as the inflammatory condition can be directly linked to one of the other three classifications.
Systemic lupus is generally considered lupus with an unknown cause and origin. As a general rule, the first five years of systemic lupus will be the most complex at which time the disease progression will taper and those organs that are affected, at this five year mark, are generally the organs that will continue to be affected for the remainder of the child’s life. Systemic lupus can affect life sustaining organs and, in some cases, it may not.
When a cause and origin can be linked to your child’s lupus, it will generally fall into one of the other three categories of lupus. The first of these is the known as discoid lupus. Considered the mildest of the four types of lupus, a child who suffers from discoid lupus will experience complications only involving the skin and, in the majority of the discoid lupus cases, the complication will not expand beyond the skin inflammation and pain.
Beyond discoid lupus, a child may also suffer from neonatal lupus. Often, this classification of lupus is found in children who are born to mothers who suffer from lupus, pass some of the antibodies through the placenta, resulting in complications in the first year of life. But, as a general rule, as the infant builds his or her own antibodies, the mother’s antibodies will fade away, resulting in a spontaneous resolution of the neonatal lupus. Only in rare cases do further complications persist.
And, finally, there is the complication known as drug-induced lupus. For children who suffer from drug-induced lupus, there is great news in that the symptoms of drug-induced lupus will generally disappear within the year after discontinuing the medication that prompted the lupus symptoms the child. Most commonly, children who suffer from drug-induced lupus are known to also suffer from unrelated cardiac complications or tuberculosis, requiring the use of prescriptions medications which induced lupus type symptoms.
As with any autoimmune disease, the key to your child’s optimal health lies in the early detection and treatment of the condition. When facing a complication associated with lupus, you will want to ensure all testing is complete and confirm the presence of one of the three reversible causes of lupus. When your child’s lupus is unrelated to these three lupus classifications, the child may suffer long term health complications when diagnosed with lupus of an unknown origin, also known as systemic lupus.
