You may experience pain and stiffness, with or without swelling. This affects most people with lupus. Common areas for muscle pain and swelling include the neck, thighs, shoulders, and upper arms.
Many people described the pain of lupus as similar to having the flu. This means having chills and bone-weary aches throughout your entire body. The pain can be numbing and leave you feeling drained of all energy. “I explain it to others as feeling like the flu: achy joints, muscles, bones.”
Lupus can cause neck and back pain, however, because muscles can become inflamed by lupus. Furthermore, the muscle pain syndrome called fibromyalgia that can cause pain in these areas is commonly associated with lupus.
Muscle and joint pain.
This affects most people with lupus. Common areas for muscle pain and swelling include the neck, thighs, shoulders, and upper arms.
Pain and aching in your muscles is common with lupus. You'll usually feel it in your thighs and upper arms. In about 5%-10% of people with lupus, the disease advances to myositis, which can cause painful muscle inflammation, especially in your shoulders, upper arms, hips, and thighs.
Having lupus can make everyday life challenging. When your lupus is active, symptoms like joint stiffness, pain, fatigue, confusion, or depression can make simple tasks difficult — and sometimes impossible. Since these symptoms aren't visible, the people around you may have trouble understanding how you feel.
Lupus symptoms can come and go. When you have them, doctors call it a “flare.” Common symptoms like fatigue, fever, stress, joint pain, and others can affect your overall quality of life. There's no cure for lupus. This makes living with it a challenge.
A typical sign of lupus is a red, butterfly-shaped rash over your cheeks and nose, often following exposure to sunlight. No two cases of lupus are exactly alike. Signs and symptoms may come on suddenly or develop slowly, may be mild or severe, and may be temporary or permanent.
The first symptoms of lupus usually occur somewhere between the teen years and the 30s and may be mild, severe, sporadic, or continual. Common general symptoms include fatigue, fever, and hair loss. Lupus can also affect individual organs and body parts, such as the skin, kidneys, and joints.
Many people who have active lupus feel ill in general. They have fever, weight loss, and fatigue. When their immune system attacks a certain organ or part of the body, they can also have more specific problems.
No one test can diagnose lupus. The combination of blood and urine tests, signs and symptoms, and physical examination findings leads to the diagnosis.
Common symptoms include fatigue, hair loss, sun sensitivity, painful and swollen joints, unexplained fever, skin rashes, and kidney problems. There is no one test for SLE. Usually, your doctor will ask you about your family and personal medical history and your symptoms. Your doctor will also do some laboratory tests.
Jobs that require outdoor work or prolonged exposure to sunlight, such as farming, landscaping, or lifeguarding, may not be ideal for people with lupus. Jobs with exposure to chemicals: Some people with lupus may have sensitivities to certain chemicals or toxins, which can exacerbate their symptoms or trigger flares.
Lupus is a chronic inflammatory autoimmune disease with a wide range of clinical presentations resulting from its effect on multiple organ systems. There are four main types of lupus: neonatal, discoid, drug-induced, and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), the type that affects the majority of patients.
Exposure to certain factors in the environment – such as viral infections, sunlight, certain medications, and smoking – may trigger lupus. Immune and Inflammatory Influences.
Anti-Nuclear Antibody (ANA) Test. Anti-nuclear antibodies (ANA) are autoantibodies to the nuclei of your cells. 98% of all people with systemic lupus have a positive ANA test, making it the most sensitive diagnostic test for confirming diagnosis of the disease.
Severe abdominal pain. Chest pain or shortness of breath. Seizures. New onset of a fever or if your fever is much higher than usual.
Joint pain is common in lupus, especially in the small joints of the hands and feet. The pain often moves from joint to joint. Joint pain, swelling and stiffness can be the main symptoms for some people with lupus. In most cases, lupus is unlikely to cause permanent damage or change the shape of joints.
The effects lupus may have in and around the eyes include: changes in the skin around the eyelids, dry eyes, inflammation of the white outer layer of the eyeball, blood vessel changes in the retina, and damage to nerves controlling eye movement and affecting vision.
Lupus and Summer Weather
Sun and heat exposure can cause symptoms to flare up because when UVA or UVB rays hit the skin, inflammation in the cells naturally occurs and often sets off a chain reaction of other symptoms.