Although chemotherapy drugs can be used to treat lupus and cancer, lupus is not cancer. For some patients whose kidneys or central nervous systems are affected by lupus, a type of drug called an immunosuppressive may be used.
Lupus is a chronic autoimmune disease in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy body cells and tissues, potentially resulting in widespread organ damage. While chemotherapy may not cure lupus, it can help manage the condition and improve a person's quality of life.
Drugs that suppress the immune system may be helpful in serious cases of lupus. Examples include azathioprine (Imuran, Azasan), mycophenolate (Cellcept), methotrexate (Trexall, Xatmep, others), cyclosporine (Sandimmune, Neoral, Gengraf) and leflunomide (Arava).
Systemic lupus erythematosus (“lupus” or “SLE”) and other autoimmune diseases are linked to an increased risk of certain types of cancer. Specifically, lupus patients may experience an elevated risk of lymphoma and other cancers, such as cancer of the cervix.
Chemotherapy helps people with certain inflammatory and autoimmune diseases because it slows cell reproduction and decreases certain products made by these cells that cause an inflammatory response to occur.
The chemotherapy drug cyclophosphamide is an U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved treatment for patients with severe lupus nephritis.
Chemotherapy drugs used for autoimmune diseases
Cyclophosphamide frequently is used to treat RA, MS, lupus, and sarcoidosis.
The 16 cancer types linked to lupus include non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, Hodgkin's lymphoma, leukemia, multiple myeloma, cervix, vagina/vulva, renal, bladder, esophagus, gastric, hepatobiliary, lung, oropharynx, larynx, non-melanoma skin, and thyroid cancers.
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. However, for the majority of people living with the disease today, it will not be fatal.
The seriousness of SLE can range from mild to life-threatening. The disease should be treated by a doctor or a team of doctors who specialize in care of SLE patients. People with lupus that get proper medical care, preventive care, and education can significantly improve function and quality of life.
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.
If left untreated, it can put you at risk of developing life-threatening problems such as a heart attack or stroke.
In some people, lupus will flare, become inactive (quiescent), and go into remission—this course of the disease may or may not occur regularly throughout their life. In other people, lupus will remain in a chronic (long-lasting) state of activity.
A 2016 British study that tracked 532 symptomatic patients found that nearly 20% of patients achieved complete remission for at least three years without medication (14.5% for three or more years and 4.3% for 10 years or more, respectively).
Kidneys About one half of people with lupus experience kidney involvement, and the kidney has become the most extensively studied organ affected by lupus.
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.
Gender: Even though anyone can get lupus, it most often affects women. They're nine to ten times more likely than men to develop it. Age: Lupus can occur at any age, but most are diagnosed in their 20s and 30s. Race: Lupus is two to three times more common in African-American women than in Caucasian women.
Living with lupus can be hard, but a positive outlook is important. You can do several things to help you live with lupus. A good place to start managing your lupus is to work with your doctor and take your medications as directed. At times, you may feel sadness and anger.
Muscle-impacting autoimmune diseases polymyositis and dermatomyositis have the strongest connection to an increased risk of bladder cancer. In addition, studies have shown an increased risk of all urological cancers, including bladder, prostate and kidney cancers, in those with an autoimmune disease.
Lupus nephritis occurs when lupus autoantibodies affect structures in your kidneys that filter out waste. This causes kidney inflammation and may lead to blood in the urine, protein in the urine, high blood pressure, impaired kidney function or even kidney failure.