Vocalist Selena Gomez undergoes chemo for lupus, drawing attention to this intervention for autoimmune diseases.

When Selena Gomez announced recently that she had been diagnosed with lupus, many people were shocked to hear the young singer was taking cancer-fighting drugs to treat her condition.

But the use of chemotherapy medications for systemic lupus erythematosus, or SLE, is already familiar to people with this autoimmune disease.

"Every day I have chemotherapy pills and then I become a monthly infusion of a biological drug that has chemotherapy-blazon side effects such as nausea, airsickness, diarrhea, fatigue, and headache," 29-year-old Erika Wilberger, of Mechanicsville, Virginia, told Healthline.

While chemotherapy drugs can exist used to treat both cancer and lupus, the two atmospheric condition are unrelated.

"The biggest matter to understand is that lupus is not cancer," said Dr. Irene Blanco, an associate professor of clinical medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and a rheumatologist with Montefiore Wellness Arrangement. "There's a lot of misconception in the community that lupus is cancer because information technology deals with the immune system and you accept abnormal cells."

Equally with other autoimmune diseases, lupus causes the immune organisation to mistakenly attack the trunk'south ain cells. The pare, joints, blood, kidneys, and other organs can all be afflicted.

Lupus symptoms include arthritis-like articulation bug, fatigue, unexplained fever, and rashes on the face and other parts of the body. If organ impairment is severe plenty, lupus tin can even exist potentially fatal.

Each person's experience with lupus, though, is unique. They may announced outwardly healthy — making lupus an "invisible illness" — but this condition tin can profoundly impact a person's life.

Wilberger, who was married in Baronial, had to postpone her honeymoon due to her status.

"I was having more frequent fevers, worsening joint and muscle aches, breast pain due to breathing difficulties and fatigue," she said. "My husband Josh and I decided to do a delayed honeymoon to give my torso a chance to recover, so I could fully enjoy our little getaway."

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Some doctors prescribe cancer-fighting drugs for lupus because they have few other options to slow down an immune organization gone haywire.

"The reason why we use these chemotherapeutics is because we don't accept really, really good medicines for lupus," said Blanco.

Few drugs have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating lupus. Some, such as aspirin and prednisone, are used for a number of other conditions.

One drug canonical in 2011 — belimumab, known by the brand proper name Benlysta — was adult specifically for lupus. Wilberger receives monthly infusions of this medication.

Fifty-fifty with the introduction of this new drug, doctors still have few lupus-specific medications at their disposal. Equally a result, they have turned to already approved cancer-fighting drugs that target the underlying cause of lupus — a hyperactive immune system.

"What nosotros practice is co-opt a lot of medications that suppress the immune organisation for our purposes in lupus," said Blanco.

One of the side-furnishings of many cancer-fighting drugs is that they weaken the allowed arrangement. In the treatment of lupus, though, this side consequence is the object.

"What we want to exercise in lupus is bring downwards the immune organisation so it stops attacking the patient itself," said Blanco. "So we use a lot of the [chemotherapy drugs] that suppress the immune system."

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One chemotherapy drug used to treat lupus and rheumatoid arthritis is methotrexate. Many drugs used to treat i autoimmune illness also piece of work in others because these atmospheric condition all share that overactive immune organisation.

Methotrexate was originally developed to treat cancer. During treatment, this drug may be injected into a vein or put directly into the fluid around the brain.

All the same, doctors use it much differently when treating lupus and other autoimmune diseases.

"Methotrexate, when it'south given for patients with rheumatologic diseases, is typically given in pill class and given in much, much lower doses — much lower doses," said Blanco.

And because less of this drug is given to a patient, the effects on the immune organisation are much smaller.

"In the treatment of cancer, [methotrexate] is a huge immunosuppressant," said Blanco, but in patients with rheumatologic diseases, "it typically doesn't suppress the allowed system every bit much as it would for a cancer patient."

In severe cases of lupus, though, doctors may utilize chemotherapy drugs more in line with how they are used in fighting cancer.

"If a patient is having neurologic symptoms — where they're having seizures or stroke or muscular sclerosis-type symptoms — then nosotros'll tend to use a much stronger, more potent, more aggressive medication that tends to estimate more the furnishings of the chemotherapeutic," said Blanco.

Treatments for lupus, though, really depend on which organs are affected and how severely.

"Lupus affects everyone differently and there is no i-size-fits-all handling," said Wilberger. "The drugs I accept work for me because I accept a team of doctors who piece of work hard together to come with a treatment program specifically for me."

This includes several medications to command her lupus — including a high dose of steroids every few months for lupus flare-ups. She also takes drugs to manage related conditions such as breathing issues and to deal with the day-to-day stress of living with a life-threatening illness.

Wilberger admits that taking so many drugs tin can exist overwhelming, but she tries to remind herself how desperately she felt earlier her diagnosis.

"Even though lupus controls most of my life and what I am able to practice, I still do my best to remain positive and have hope for the futurity," said Wilberger. "Hope is what keeps me live and fighting fifty-fifty when information technology all feels so impossible. I refuse to surrender without a fight."

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