On Thursday, May 2, 2002, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report, “Trends in Deaths from Systemic Lupus Erythematosus—United States, 1979-1998,” that revealed a 60-70 percent upsurge in lupus deaths over the past 20 years. Each year during the study period, death rates were more than five times higher for women than for men, and more than three times higher for African Americans than for Caucasians. The CDC states that the keys to preventing future deaths from lupus, in part, will require earlier recognition and diagnosis, and appropriate therapeutic management.
The S.L.E. Lupus Foundation believes that significantly raising awareness about lupus, both among women who may be at risk, as well as physicians, whose accurate diagnosis could be a matter of life or death, is critical. “Lupus has been called the ‘great imitator,’ a disease that is still misunderstood, which contributes to the widespread lack of diagnosis and misdiagnosis,” stated Margaret Dowd, executive director of the S.L.E. Lupus Foundation. “Additionally, we haven’t had a major new treatment for lupus in more than 40 years even though no other disease has had an increasing death rate of this magnitude.”