Free Positive Options for Living with Lupus by Philippa Pigache

blood-forming tissues are stimulated to produce yet more white cells. Ultimately, in the normal course of events, inflammation is self-limiting: T suppressors call a halt once the infection is cleared or the wound healed. However, in autoimmune diseases like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, “it ain’t necessarily so.”
    Immune System Malfunction
    Autoimmune diseases affect players in the immune system. For example, the AIDS virus attacks T helper cells, depleting them so that people with the disease eventually succumb to a range of opportunistic infections that a healthy immune system would normally take in its stride. In lupus, as in rheumatoid arthritis, the problem is an overactive immune system. The antibody-producing B cells increase eight- to tenfold, and the T suppressor cells, designed to suppress antibody production once the alien invader has POL text Q6 good.qxp 8/12/2006 7:39 PM Page 47
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    been vanquished, are in short supply. B cells that produce antibodies with no obvious enemy to attack are called autoreactive —in other words, reacting to the body itself—and one of the things they appear to attack is immature T suppressor cells, which may explain the shortage of mature active ones in people with lupus.
    A healthy immune system, like other body systems, depends on balance—on the right number of actors playing their parts at the right time, delivering the right lines, and then leaving the stage. For more than thirty years scientists have known that in lupus, B cells continue to produce antibodies when there is nothing to attack, and they have been trying to fathom why. Is it that the B cells are still getting messages (via those important cytokines) to attack, or are they failing to get the message (from other important cytokines) to stop? And is that because too many “Attack!” messages go out, or too few “Back off!” messages? Is the problem too many or too few message senders—helper T cells or suppressor T cells—or is it that the right messages get scrambled and don’t get through to the overactive B cells? When you realize how complex the interaction of these immune-system actors is, you can see how difficult it is to un-ravel which part of the play has gone wrong. From the point of view of scientists trying to put things right, it means lots of different places where they can try to intervene.
    There is a colorful cartoon version of the inflammation battle-ground, plus a depiction of what goes wrong in lupus, on the Lupus Society of Alberta website (see Resources).
    Messages in Blood
    From the point of view of the doctors trying to make a diagnosis, there are lots of potentially malfunctioning components to look for in the lupus patient’s blood. The blood is the body’s transport system, and a great deal of information can be obtained by unpacking the things carried around the body in the bloodstream at any one time. Other bodily functions are also informative: urine, the fluid inside joints or spinal cord, blood-pressure readings, and recordings POL text Q6 good.qxp 8/12/2006 7:39 PM Page 48
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    Po s i t i v e O pt i o n s fo r L i v i n g w i t h L u p u s of the electrical activity of the heart and brain. But in lupus blood tests are vital. So if you have it, resign yourself to having a lot of needles stuck into you.
    In addition to the clinical symptoms outlined in the last chapter, the remainder of the ACR diagnostic criteria for lupus are detected from blood tests. Here is a list of them:
    ◗ Hematological (blood) abnormalities —These usually show up in a complete blood count (CBC), a procedure as basic as taking a pulse or blood-pressure measurement.
    Almost all lupus patients will have some abnormal factor in their blood at some time in their illness. There could be a shortage of erythrocytes (Greek for “red cells”), the red blood cells that carry oxygen around the body. Shortage of red blood