Lupus gets milder the older you get

Lupus—the chronic auto-immune disorder—may not be a life sentence: it can improve, and even disappear, as people get older.

Doctors are finding that sufferers are seeing their symptoms improve dramatically when they reach their sixties, and it behaves completely differently than other chronic, progressive conditions.

Lupus causes the immune system’s interferons, its first-line viral defences, to attack the body. Nearly every organ is at risk, leading to conditions like kidney and heart disease.

But it does a complete about-turn by the time the sufferer reaches his sixties and seventies, and the disabling process just stops.

Researchers from the University of California at San Francisco have seen it happen in blood samples taken from lupus sufferers of all ages.

It’s an enigma.  Inflammatory markers tend to rise as we age, and it’s so common that it has been called “inflammaging,” but, for the lupus sufferer, this goes into reverse.

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