Treatment
The treatment of SLE involves preventing flares and reducing their severity and duration when they occur.
Treatment can include corticosteroids and anti-malarial drugs. Certain types of lupus nephritis such as diffuse proliferative glomerulonephritis require bouts of cytotoxic drugs. These drugs include cyclophosphamide and mycophenolate.
Hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) was approved by the FDA for lupus in 1955. Some drugs approved for other diseases are used for SLE 'off-label'. In November 2010, an FDA advisory panel recommended approving belimumab (Benlysta) as a treatment for the pain and flare-ups common in lupus. The drug was approved by the FDA in March 2011.
Read more about this topic: Systemic Lupus Erythematosus
Famous quotes containing the word treatment:
“I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrongdoing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course. Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion. I will keep pure and holy both my life and my art.”
—Hippocrates (c. 460–c. 370 B.C.)
“The treatment of African and African American culture in our education was no different from their treatment in Tarzan movies.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)
“If the study of all these sciences, which we have enumerated, should ever bring us to their mutual association and relationship, and teach us the nature of the ties which bind them together, I believe that the diligent treatment of them will forward the objects which we have in view, and that the labor, which otherwise would be fruitless, will be well bestowed.”
—Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)