Does the course of SLE vary?
Yes. Patients with SLE follow three types of courses: chronic active, relapsing-remitting, and long-remitting. The chronic active form is most common, accounting for about half of patient-years. Severity of lupus varies from mild to life-threatening. Kidney and neurologic disease worsen an individual patient’s prognosis more than do arthritis, rash, or other organ pathology. Ten-year survival of all patients is more than 80%, but disabilities are common. Although flares of lupus in individual patients tend to repeat themselves – a patient whose prior flares have been characterized by arthritis and rash is likely to have similar future flares – the disease does change over time. Patients after many years of disease develop hypertension, accelerated atherosclerosis, heart and lung disease, renal failure, and osteoporosis and other complications of therapy. Patients with antiphospholipid antibody develop blood clots and valvular heart disease. For more information, click here to read our
