"Medical students are often told 'Know lupus and you know medicine,'" says Dr. Daniel Wallace, rheumatologist, in his book The Lupus Book.
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4 Celebrities With Lupus
Lupus has many shades. It can affect people of different races, ethnicities, and ages, both men and women. It's different for every person who has it and anyone can get it. But African Americans are four times more like to be lupus victims than other races.
Following is a list of black celebrities who have been diagnosed with the disease.
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Toni Braxton
.jpg) Women of color are two to three times more likely than white women to develop lupus, says Dawn Isherwood, a health educator with the Lupus Foundation of America. Braxton, who revealed her diagnosis at a lupus benefit last November, recently tweeted: "Lupus medication actually causes most women to gain weight. But we’re still fabulous! I’m going to work it on out." Corticosteroids—one of the mainstays of lupus treatment—can indeed promote weight gain. Still, exercise can help people with lupus manage their weight and will also improve their quality of life, Isherwood says.
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Seal
 The famous British singer was diagnosed with discoid lupus when he was child. What could be considered trademark scarring on his face is a result of his illness. The scars on the singer’s face are the result of discoid lupus erythematosus, a type of lupus involving only the skin. Discoid lupus typically causes sores on the face and scalp but can affect the skin anywhere on the body. It can also cause hair loss. People with discoid lupus are often sensitive to ultraviolet light, and need to be careful about sun exposure. Ten percent of people with discoid lupus will go on to develop systemic lupus, Isherwood says, although it’s possible these individuals already had the illness but just weren’t diagnosed.
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| Tim Raines
 When playing left field for the Oakland Athletics in 1999, Raines sought medical attention for extreme fatigue. He had swelling in his knees and ankles and was 15 pounds heavier than normal, suggesting he was retaining water; his doctor ordered a kidney biopsy, and diagnosed lupus. The disease was attacking Raines’ kidneys, throwing off the normal balance of water and salt in his body. His case was severe, but he improved with radiation therapy and medication. Raines even went back to baseball, joining the Montreal Expos in 2001, and retiring in 2002 with the Florida Marlins.
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| Michael Jackson
 The King of Pop was no stranger to controversy or conversation about his health. In 1986, Jackson was diagnosed with vitiligo and lupus; the vitiligo partially lightened his skin, and the lupus was in remission; both illnesses made him sensitive to sunlight, which could have caused his lupus condition to recur. Jackson had a form of skin lupus, called discoid lupus, which affects about 40 percent of the patients with lupus, which can lead to depigmentation of the skin, among other things.
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"Understanding the immunology of lupus will help us better understand AIDS, infections in general, allergies and cancer," Wallace says. Just like lupus, those diseases are immune-related disorders. The factors that cause lupus go to the core of how the immune system works and advances in understanding it often have a spillover effect to the insight into other disorders, the author says.
While lupus affects up to 1.4 million people, according to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), a number of polls show that public awareness of the disease is poor.
Lupus is an auto-immune disease in which the body's immune system mistakenly starts attacking its own tissues and organs. It's a chronic inflammatory condition that can affect one or more organs, including the skin, blood, joints, heart, lungs and kidneys.
There are four different types of lupus but the most common type is systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) which can affect different systems in the body and whose severity ranges from mild to life threatening. Most often a mention of simply "lupus" refers to this type of the disease since about 70 percent of lupus cases are systemic. In about half of the systemic cases, a major organ will be affected.
Nobody knows what exactly triggers lupus, but researchers believe it's a combination of genetic and environmental factors. Ninety percent of lupus cases are among women. Lupus is three times more common in African-American than in white women and also more common in Hispanic, Asian, and American Indian women. African-American and Hispanic women develop symptoms at an earlier age than other women and African-American women have more severe involvement of internal organs, especially the kidneys, according to the DHHS.
Lupus and Infections
Infections are a common problem for people with lupus and they tend to last longer and require extended treatment, compared to people who don't have lupus. People with lupus may be more likely to get infections, says Dr. John Davis Jr., rheumatologist and director of the Lupus Clinic at University of California, San Francisco. "They [patients with lupus] are more at risk because they have abnormalities in their immune system and most importantly take medications that suppresses the immune system," Davis says.
A way to safeguard against infections is to work closely with a rheumatologist and report immediately any fevers, Davis says. Wallace recommends in his book that people with lupus exercise common sense and try to minimize their risk factors for catching an infection.
Lupus and the Kidneys
Kidney disease is one of the most common complications of lupus, especially among African-American women. "Between 40 and 70 percent of people with lupus will have some form of kidney involvement and it can range from very mild to severe," Davis says. Davis says some warning signs of kidney problems in people with lupus are swelling of the legs, frequent urination, especially at night, and high blood pressure. Many people with lupus, however, don't show symptoms even when they have failing kidneys, so Davis recommends routinely testing blood and urine to catch kidney involvement in the earliest stages.
Lupus and the Heart
Two main types of heart conditions develop as a result of living with lupus. One is inflammation of the sack surrounding the heart and another is coronary artery disease which is narrowing of the small blood vessels that supply oxygen and blood to the heart.
Coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in the United States for men and women, according to the National Institutes of Health. It's also the third leading cause of death in people with lupus after complications of kidney disease and infection, according to Wallace. The difference between coronary artery disease in people with lupus and those without lupus is that those who live with lupus develop the heart condition earlier in life.
One way for people living with lupus to take care of their heart is to check their cholesterol regularly, says Davis, especially if the lupus has already affected their kidneys because then they're more likely to have high cholesterol. "Keep your blood pressure under control, watch your weight, lower your cholesterol and exercise," says Davis about heart disease prevention for people with lupus. "It's the same prevention that you'd do for heart disease in people without lupus but you do it at an younger age and have a lower threshold for evaluating possible heart problems."
Reading about lupus and the complications it can bring may sound disheartening to people living with the disease and others who are just finding out about it. There is good news though and that is that most people with lupus have only a mild form of lupus with no life-threatening consequences or major organ complications, Davis says. For those with severe lupus, research offers encouragement. "The good news about severe lupus is that many drugs are currently under investigation and they may be safer and more targeted to specific causes of lupus," Davis says.
Blackdoctor.org granted permission to reprint this article.
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