New Guidelines for Diagnosis and Treatment of Lupus
Treatment for severe cases
As it involves organs like the kidneys, treatment would depend on many factors after a thorough investigation. It is not only about immunosuppression or anti-inflammatory therapy; a person may need antibiotics, antithrombotic drugs, or anticoagulants and many others.
Once the acute phase and symptoms related to organs have been controlled, one maybe given more of an aggressive immunosuppressive therapy. Some people may benefit from plasmapheresis (separation of specific blood components) or other such types of treatments.
In the future, doctors would use drugs like belimumab and rituximab more often as they do not suppress the complete immune system, but rather some specific parts of the immune system that are known to play a role in the development of diseases like lupus.
References
- New guidelines published to improve diagnosis and treatment of lupus [Internet]. 2017 [cited 2017 Nov 2]. Available from: https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/news/latest/2017/10/new-guideline-lupus-rheumatology.aspx
- Gordon C, Amissah-Arthur M-B, Gayed M, Brown S, Bruce IN, D’Cruz D, et al. The British Society for Rheumatology guideline for the management of systemic lupus erythematosus in adults. Rheumatology (Oxford) [Internet]. [cited 2017 Oct 31]; Available from: https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/doi/10.1093/rheumatology/kex286/4318863