Progress toward Better Treatment of Lupus

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an inflammatory, multisystem autoimmune disease of unknown cause that has protean clinical and laboratory manifestations along with a variable course and prognosis.1 Approximately 200,000 patients in the United States currently meet the diagnostic criteria for lupus, but up to 500,000 have features that fall on a spectrum that overlaps with that of lupus, such as both undifferentiated and mixed connective-tissue disease and antiphospholipid syndrome. Lupus is associated with multiple complications and is one of the leading causes of death in young women.2 In those between the ages of 15 and 24 years, it is the . . .