What is systemic lupus erythematosus?

Systemic systemic systemic systemic inflammatory disease (SLE) is a relatively common autoimmune inflammatory disease that threatens both health and life. The most common symptoms are fatigue, weakness, fever, weight loss, hair loss, oral ulcers, and some arthritis pain and joint deformities.

1. General symptoms

The ratio of male to female affected by this disease is 1:7 to 9. The age of onset is mostly between 20 and 40 years old, but young children or the elderly may also develop the disease. Fatigue, fever, and weight loss.

2. Skin and mucous membranes

The manifestations are varied and can be roughly divided into two categories: specific and nonspecific. ① Specific skin lesions include butterfly rash, subacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus, and discoid erythema. ② Non-specific skin lesions include photosensitivity, hair loss, oral ulcers, cutaneous vasculitis (purpura), pigmentation changes (deposition or loss), livedo reticularis, Raynaud's phenomenon, urticarial rash, and rarely, lupus panniculitis or deep lupus and bullous lupus erythematosus.

3. Skeletal muscles

Symptoms include joint pain, arthritis, joint deformity (10% X-ray destruction) as well as myalgia, muscle weakness, avascular bone necrosis, and osteoporosis.

4. Heart involvement

There may be pericarditis (4% of patients have signs of pericardial tamponade), myocarditis mainly manifested as congestive heart failure, and valvular heart disease, such as Libman-Sacks endocarditis. Coronary arteritis is rare and presents mainly with chest pain, abnormal electrocardiogram, and elevated cardiac enzymes.

5. Respiratory system involvement

Pleurisy, pleural effusion (20%-30%), shrinking lung syndrome mainly manifested as a feeling of shortness of breath and diaphragm dysfunction); interstitial lung lesions are seen in 10%-20% of patients, of which 1%-10% manifest as acute lupus pneumonia, 0%-9% manifest as chronic interstitial lung infiltrative lesions, pulmonary embolism (5%-10%, usually antiphospholipid antibody positive), pulmonary hemorrhage and pulmonary hypertension (1%) can all occur.