Side Effects of Chemotherapy for Lupus
While lupus is a very common condition, many people are not aware of what it is and what can be done to treat it. Lupus attacks a person's immune system, and she has problems with her body attacking healthy tissues and cells. Treatment can be difficult at times, but one form of treatment that has proved to have a 40 percent success rate with no problems down the road is chemotherapy.
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Significance
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While chemotherapy is mainly used for cancer patients, it can be used for many other illnesses, especially those that affect the autoimmune system, such as lupus. The chemotherapy helps to eliminate the irregular behavior in a person's cells instead of destroying the cells altogether.
Side Effects
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Even though the doses for lupus are much lower than for cancer, the side effects of chemotherapy are quite similar. When chemotherapy is administered, it depletes the number of red blood cells that are formed, which can make a person anemic. A person going through this type of treatment may also have a low white blood cell count, which can make him more susceptible to illnesses. It is said that this is for a brief time due to the low dose of the medication.
A patient may also experience such symptoms as nausea, diarrhea, vomiting and an upset stomach. It is important to remember that many of these symptoms go away after time. Patients should also be careful when getting a cut, as their blood may be slow to clot.
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Benefits
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One of the best benefits of chemotherapy for illnesses such as lupus is that the dosage of chemotherapy used is much less than the dose for cancer treatment. This type of treatment takes longer than other treatments do but, in the end, has a longer-lasting effect. In some cases, it stops lupus altogether.
Warning
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If you suffer from lupus and are considering chemotherapy, you will want to talk with your doctor. It is important to keep your doctor informed of the condition so that she can make the best choice in the type of chemotherapy for you.
Types
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While there are a great deal of chemotherapy drugs on the market today that can be used to treat such conditions as lupus, some have been known to work best: azathioprine, cyclophosphamide, lefunomide, methotrexate and mycophenolate. Some of the brand names of these are Arava, Cytoxan, Rheumatrex, Imuran and CellCept.
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