I will believe it when I see it. +4

Is there a cure for lupus? At the present time there is not a cure for lupus, but there certainly is effective treatment. How is lupus treated? The majority of symptoms of lupus are due to inflammation and so the treatment is aimed at reducing that inflammation. This can be done through a number of different medications. There are four families of medications used in the treatment of lupus. They include: * Nonsteroidal Anti-inflammatory Drugs - drugs such as ibuprofen (Advil & Motrin), naproxen, (Naprosyn & Aleve), sulindac (Clinoril), piroxicam (Feldene), diclofenac (Voltaren) to name a few. * Corticosteroids - drugs such as prednisone, prednisolone, medrol, deltasone, cortisone and others. * Anti-malarials - these have been found to be effective in treating the joint pain, skin rashes and ulcers that some people develop on the inside of their nose or mouth. Plaquenil (hydroxychloroquine) is probably the most commonly prescribed anti-malarial drug in the United States. There is no known relationship between lupus and malaria. * The fourth family of medications, immunosuppressants (or immunomodulating) /chemotherapy, is generally reserved for those individuals who have the most severe flares of lupus; or to enable the steroid dose to be reduced. A severe flare is one that affects an organ to the degree that the function is impaired. When this happens something has to be done to preserve the function of the organ and that's when immunosuppressive or chemotherapy medications are prescribed. These actually suppress the over activity of the immune system brought on by the lupus, and help limit the damage and preserve the function of the involved organ. (Lupus is NOT a form of cancer). The majority of people who have lupus are treated with the first three families of medications, the nonsteroidals, corticosteroids and the anti-malarial drugs. These may be used either alone or in combination. Since individuals respond differently to medications, it may take time before you are able to determine, through trial & error, which medication at which dose provides relief of the symptoms of lupus. Frequently physicians will try one medication see how it works and if it doesn't work, they may have to change the dose or switch to another medication. The very latest research news is. Lupus Research Institute Propels Discovery. Studies Harness Emerging Technologies to Advance Lupus Treatments From the innovative design of tiny drug delivery “magic bullets” to a pioneering hunt for immune system therapies, the Lupus Research Institute’s (LRI) latest round of Novel Research Grants promises to break crucial new ground in the urgent search for solutions to lupus, a chronic and often devastating autoimmune disease. The $2.9 million in awards to 11 investigators nationwide brings the LRI’s total investment for Novel Research Grants to $26 million since the Institute was founded by friends and families of people with lupus in 2000. LRI-funded scientists have made rapid and powerful breakthroughs, in just a few years profoundly reshaping scientific knowledge of an illness suffered by more than 1.5 million Americans and millions more worldwide. “The LRI’s strategy of funding only novel scientific ideas in lupus has more than demonstrated its power,” said William E. Paul, MD, chief of the Laboratory of Immunology at NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and chairman of the LRI’s Scientific Advisory Board. In the drive to fill a significant gap in lupus research, the LRI is also now funding work that will translate basic research findings to the human disease, harnessing emerging technologies to analyze human tissue and spur the development of new therapies. “There is a real need in lupus research is creative work in human lupus biology,” said Peter E. Lipsky, MD, previous chief of the Autoimmunity Branch of the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS). “This is one of the most important areas to pursue. And now, for the first time, we have the tools to ask incisive questions and make new insights directly in the human lupus immune system.” And so a University of Washington pediatrician will now able to search for new immune-modulating therapies in tissue samples from a group of children with lupus, and a Temple University physician in Philadelphia will advance insight in lupus kidney failure in men specifically by studying tissue, urine, and serum biopsies taken from patients of both genders. Individual researchers as well as powerful consortiums of technology and talent applied for ‘Human Lupus Biology’ awards. One consortium of three investigators at the University of Alabama at Birmingham will use human material from healthy people to determine whether alterations in a particular gene might lead to lupus. Another consortium in Human Lupus Biology unites researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx to evaluate the power of five highly promising urine biomarkers (“early markers”) to predict the onset and progression of lupus nephritis in humans.