Word: erythematosus
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Suddenly, violently, Philippine politics had entered an uncertain new era, and the 17-year-old regime of President Ferdinand Marcos seemed vulnerable. Many in Manila have believed for some time that Marcos, 65, is chronically ill-a kidney ailment and lupus erythematosus are the most common rumors-and a peaceful succession is by no means certain. Marcos' authoritarian rule, coupled with a deepening economic crisis, has fostered widespread apathy and cynicism, and driven many young Filipinos into the country's small but increasingly troublesome Communist movement. That has weakened the nonviolent center and raised the chances...
...Saratoga Springs, N.Y., along with luminous fellow guests like Robert Lowell. She had settled down in the Connecticut household of Poet Robert Fitzgerald, his wife Sally and a brood of small children, working on a novel optioned by a New York publisher. Then she was hit with disseminated lupus erythematosus, a severe disease that could be kept at bay only with drugs and a straitened, cautious existence. She went home and wrote as hard as her reduced energy would permit. Two novels and a volume of short stories created a critical stir. In 1964 she was readying a second book...
...positive, indicating that she might have syphilis. Refusing to believe those results, she promptly demanded and got another examination-which confirmed that she did not have syphilis. The "false positive" had been caused by a more serious ailment: the baffling-and as yet incurable-disease of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), which afflicts perhaps half a million people...
Striking predominantly women in their childbearing years, lupus erythematosus ("red wolf disease") was given its bizarre name by 19th century doctors who thought that its characteristic reddish rash resembled a wolfs bite. Now physicians know that discolored skin is only one symptom of a far more pervasive ailment. Like rheumatoid arthritis, SLE is one of the so-called autoimmune diseases, caused by the body literally waging war on itself...
...addition to these dramatic results, doctors now know more than ever before about what happens in such autoimmune diseases as rheumatoid arthritis and systemic lupus erythematosus, in which the immune system goes haywire, recognizes certain of the body's own tissues as foreign, and destroys them. They can also treat these illnesses with drugs that suppress the immune system, relieving the symptoms at the risk of leaving the body open to infection. But they have yet to learn the exact causes, let alone the cures for these diseases, which affect more than 5.5 million Americans...