The goal of treatment is to relieve symptoms and protect organs by decreasing inflammation and/or the level of autoimmune activity in the body. Systemic lupus erythematosus most often harms the heart, joints, skin, lungs, blood vessels, liver, kidneys, and nervous system.
It appears that people with an inherited predisposition for lupus may develop the disease when they come into contact with something in the environment that can trigger lupus. Sun exposure (ultraviolet light) is a known environmental agent that can worsenrashes of patients with lupus and sometimes trigger a flare of the entire disease. The most common type of autoantibody that develops in people with lupus is called an antinuclear antibody (ANA) because it reacts with parts of the cell’s nucleus (command center).