Like many of you, I have a hard time keeping up with what’s going on in lupus research.

In order to make that a little easier, I’ve added a sidebar widget that provides updates from the Lupus Research Institute. If you move your mouse over a particular news item, you will be able to see a short snippet of the article. If it seems like something you’re interested in reading, you can click the link and read the actual article.

I spent a little time on the Lupus Research Institute website yesterday, reading some comments made by Dr. Bevra Hahn regarding the new lupus drug Benlysta:

These new results show that administration of Benlysta for one year, in addition to standard treatments for SLE, resulted in substantial improvement in almost 60% of people, compared to only 46% in the group that received placebo plus standard care; the improvement included better quality of life.

I had the good fortune to meet Dr. Hahn a few years ago at a health conference where she was featured as a guest speaker. I was really impressed with her. I have nothing but great things to say about the medical staff at UCLA. It is a very long drive from Fresno to Los Angeles, but it is worth it to get such great medical care. Jenny’s rheumatologist is fabulous.

I hope the sidebar widget makes it easier to stay up with the latest lupus news. I don’t want to overwhelm the site with too much information, but it’s good to stay informed.

My wife has been having a lot of problems lately remembering things and has been acting a little odd. This isn’t a new symptom of her lupus, but it is one that tends to vary in severity. Sometimes people refer to this as lupus fog, and it can also be related to fibromyalgia, but I feel like what has been happening lately is a bit more severe.

I found this on the Lupus International website:

NEUROCOGNITIVE DYSFUNCTION is also a common and overlooked clinical feature of lupus estimated to occur in up to 80% of affected individuals. The diversity of cognitive impairments parallels the considerable variability of the disease process. Deficits in learning and/or memory, reasoning, verbal fluency, motor function, basic attention, and information processing speed are the most consistently described.

This is precisely the kind of things my wife’s been dealing with for years, although never all of them at once. (more…)