Lupus and the cure-all hormone?

New medical treatments are at their most exciting stage when treating diseases that are as yet not very well understood by medics or scientists. When it comes to lupus, not only are symptoms diverse and can number as many as eleven discrete types, but treatments by medication are also various in their application and effect. In this article, we will consider one of the methods to improve the operation of the immune system, the target of the lupus disease.

Lupus can occur in several forms, but systemic lupus erythematosus — usually referred to simply as lupus — is the most serious type. The symptoms of lupus(http://conditionsinfo.mitamins.com/Immune-System-Lupus/Lupus-Symptoms.html) are rather hard to categorize but in short, lupus is an incurable disease marked by inflammation and damage to tissue and organs throughout the body, including the joints, skin, heart, kidney and central nervous system. Lupus is an autoimmune disorder, meaning the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own tissue. Many believe the way to treat this hormonally based autoimmune disease is by giving the body a dose of super-hormones.

DHEA

It is quite possible that this substance with the four-letter acronym will prove essential to the lupus treatment regime. Dehydroepiandrosterone, or DHEA, is a chemical cousin of testosterone and estrogen. It is made from cholesterol by the adrenal glands, which are found above the kidneys. Around age six or seven, the adrenal glands begin to produce DHEA, and production peaks in the mid-20s, when DHEA is the most abundant hormone in circulation. From one’s early ’30s on, there’s a steady decline in DHEA production, so the average 75-year-old has only 20% of the DHEA in circulation that he or she had 50 years earlier. At all ages, men tend to have higher DHEA levels than women.

What exactly is DHEA and does it work on lupus?

By definition, hormones are chemical messengers made in a gland or tissue that start, stop, or otherwise orchestrate activity in some other issue. What exactly DHEA does in the body is hard to assess, but evidence is coming in right now that it has positive impacts on people with lupus.

How has DHEA been tested?

Much of DHEA’s high reputation in recent years comes from experiments in which mice were fed daily low level doses. Such studies have shown that DHEA can prevent or delay the onset of cancer, “hardening” of the arteries, lethal viral infections, lowered immunity, obesity, and diabetes. The longest and perhaps most carefully conducted work in humans was published last year in a special issue of the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences devoted to DHEA and aging, eight men and eight women aged 50 to 65 took either 100 milligrams of DHEA or an identical placebo pill each night for three months. For three months after that, they took the opposite pill. This study showed a rise in some chemical markers that suggested improvement in the immune function, though the number of colds and other illnesses was not measured.

How has DHEA been tested as a lupus treatment

The research was followed up with one on the lupus disease itself. Volunteers took DHEA suggests that this hormone may help treat the autoimmune disease lupus. Trials looking at DHEA’s ability to boost the immune system and maintain mental function in older adults are in progress. What we really need at this point are some long-term clinical trials to identify clear benefits and risks say most doctors. To put it positively, these trials are exactly what is happening, but in order to give us more weighty evidence, need to be applied to the test of time. Short scale tests, or those in animals simply won’t do for the next generation of DHEA testing for lupus.

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