Karen Costenbader, MD, discusses how early intervention with belimumab in patients with lupus significantly reduces disease flares and prevents irreversible organ damage.
Rates of significant disease reactivation were similar more than 1 year after randomization for patients assigned to mycophenolate mofetil (MMF) withdrawal or MMF maintenance.
/PRNewswire/ Lupus is a complicated and debilitating autoimmune disease, affecting millions of people across the globe. Yet, lupus drug development lags.
Read More There is a lot about lupus that is still a conundrum to us, said Dr. Karen H. Costenbader, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and director of the Lupus Program at Brigham and Women s Hospital in Boston. It s treatable, but it can still be very painful and challenging to overcome, said Costenbader, who is also chair of the Lupus Foundation of America s Medical-Scientific Advisory Council.
May 10 is World Lupus Day, and we recently caught up with Costenbader to learn more about the disease.
This conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
CNN: What does it mean that lupus is an autoimmune disease?
WireImage
Lupus is unpredictable, triggering different symptoms in different patients. A chronic illness, it can even attack many different parts of the body.
The condition is an autoimmune disease, which means that a person’s immune system the body system that usually fights infections attacks healthy tissue instead. It can cause inflammation and pain anywhere in a patient’s body.
Because the illness can look different in every patient, it can go undetected and undiagnosed for years.
The Lupus Foundation of America estimates that 1.5 million Americans and at least 5 million people worldwide have some form of lupus. There are four forms in all: systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), lupus confined to the skin, lupus caused by some prescription drugs and a rare lupus that affects infants of women with the disease.