A Patient Asks: What is lupus remission?
LSI received the following question. Medical Advisory Board members answer these questions. If you have a question, please forward it to [email protected] or call 312-542-0002.
Thanks to Dr. Meenakshi Jolly for providing the answer to this patient’s question.
Remission is defined in various ways. For lupus, we use treat to target definition of how well the disease is doing. It has four categories.
- Remission off lupus medicine/s. Means lupus stays inactive despite being off medicines for lupus.
- Remission on lupus medicine/s. Means lupus is not active but Only while the patient continues to remain on medicines for their lupus.
- Low disease activity. Patients lupus is active but mildly so while the patient is receiving medicine for lupus like prednisone but the daily dose is less than 5 mg.
- Not optimally controlled or very active disease. Means patients continue to have more than mildly active disease despite being on medicines for lupus.
Patients are allowed to be on hydroxychloroquine in either of these four situations.
Well managed lupus could be remission while on medicines for lupus. Even low disease activity group can also be included under well managed disease. While not optimally controlled group would be poorly controlled group. Can’t say that this group is always poorly managed is some patients remain very active or non-optimally controlled despite good management plans by their physicians.
It could be just that their disease is aggressive or resistant to currently available medication regimens to manage their lupus.
