SLE and other autoimmune disorders tend to run in families, but the inheritance pattern is usually unknown. People may inherit a gene variation that increases or decreases the risk of SLE, but in most cases do not inherit the condition itself.
The majority of lupus cases that develop are referred to as sporadic, which means no known relative has the disease. Although lupus can develop in people with no family history of lupus, there are often other autoimmune diseases in some family members.
In 20% of people who have lupus, a parent or sibling already has lupus or develops it later. About 5% of children born to a parent with lupus will develop the disease. Even in people with no lupus in their family history, other autoimmune diseases are more likely.
Lupus is not a hereditary condition.
It's likely that lupus results from a combination of your genetics and your environment. It appears that people with an inherited predisposition for lupus may develop the disease when they come into contact with something in the environment that can trigger lupus. The cause of lupus in most cases, however, is unknown.
Who is at risk for SLE? SLE can affect people of all ages, including children. However, women of childbearing ages—15 to 44 years—are at greatest risk of developing SLE. Women of all ages are affected far more than men (estimates range from 4 to 12 women for every 1 man).
Anyone can get lupus; however, women get the disease about nine times more often than men. Most often it happens in people between ages 15 and 45 years, but lupus can occur in childhood or later in life as well.
It's not a disease that parents pass directly down to their children; in fact, there's only about a 5 percent chance that a son or daughter of someone with lupus will also develop it. While researchers do believe that genes play a big role in causing lupus, there's more to it than that.
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and Sjögren's syndrome (SS) may coexist, and they are chronic complex disorders, with an autoimmune background, multifactorial etiology, multiple circulating autoantibodies, and variable prognosis.
Lupus affects more women than men. Lupus is a chronic, autoimmune disease that affects more women than men. If you have lupus, your risk is higher for other health problems that are common in women, such as heart disease and osteoporosis.
Symptoms and diagnosis occur most often between the ages of 15 and 44. Symptoms of lupus will occur before age 18 in only 15 percent of the people who are later diagnosed with the disease.
The prognosis of lupus is better today than ever before. With close follow-up and treatment, 80-90% of people with lupus can expect to live a normal life span. It is true that medical science has not yet developed a method for curing lupus, and some people do die from the disease.
With age, symptom activity with lupus often declines, but symptoms you already have may grow more severe. The accumulation of damage over years may result in the need for joint replacements or other treatments.
The disease tends to occur in families. Siblings of SLE patients have a risk of disease of about 2%. However, even identical twins with SLE are concordant for disease in only 25% of cases and are therefore discordant (ie, one twin has SLE and one does not) in about 75% of cases.
African-American and Hispanic women are more likely to have severe forms of lupus. Family history: Relatives of people with lupus have a greater chance of developing lupus. Only about 2 percent of children whose mothers have lupus will develop it.
Women with lupus can safely get pregnant and most will have normal pregnancies and healthy babies. However, all women with lupus who get pregnant are considered to have a “high risk pregnancy.” This means that problems during pregnancy may be more likely for women with lupus.
Prevention Tips
Exposure to UV rays from sunlight and other light sources can trigger flares in many people with lupus. Staying out of the sun between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., applying sunscreen every day, and wearing sun-protective clothing can prevent UV rays from triggering a lupus flare.
Infertility may be more common in women with SLE than suspected. In an evaluation of 136 infertile women, 1.5% had undiagnosed SLE. Overall, women with SLE have fewer children than do healthy women,12 13 possibly related to the known higher risk of pregnancy loss.
In addition, certain environmental factors have been linked to the development of lupus. These environmental contributors are difficult to isolate, but researchers have established links between lupus and a variety of toxins, such as cigarette smoke, silica, and mercury.
Lupus symptoms can also be unclear, can come and go, and can change. On average, it takes nearly six years for people with lupus to be diagnosed, from the time they first notice their lupus symptoms.
Kidneys About one half of people with lupus experience kidney involvement, and the kidney has become the most extensively studied organ affected by lupus.
Hair loss is common in people living with lupus. The autoimmune disease causes body-wide inflammation that attacks the joints and skin, including the scalp. This can result in hair loss (alopecia ). Lupus-related hair loss can occur slowly, causing hair to become noticeably thinner gradually.