HEALTHLINE Elizabeth A. Reid, MD Lupus: Trouble in the Matrix his twenty-three-year-old daughter O
UTSIDE the world of medicine, lupus was an obscure ail ment until the fall of 2012, when former NBA basketball star and current NBA coach Kevin McHale suffered the loss of to the disease. News stories
named lupus as the cause of her death, but most often they left readers in the dark about the nature of a condition that could rob a beautiful, athletic young woman of her life within a year of diagnosis.
What Is Lupus?
Lupus is not an easy condition to describe. Sometimes called “the great imitator,” it produces numerous, often vague symptoms, such as muscle aches, fatigue, and fever, and affects many different parts of the body. Understanding what happens inside the body when lupus occurs may help shed light on the nature of this disease. Lupus is part of a group of ailments known as connective tissue disorders and involves the remarkable mixture of proteins and carbo- hydrates that fills the spaces between all the cells of the body like grout
fills the spaces between tiles or stones. Connective tissue disorders are either inherited or acquired. The inherited forms are rare, and the acquired forms are almost all caused by inflammation. Some of the inflammatory causes are straightforward, one-time infec- tions, but recurring problems are most often caused by autoimmu- nity, which is when the immune system mistakenly attacks parts of the body as if
they were foreign invaders. Lupus falls into this category, and in the case of lupus, connective tissue is the immune system’s target.
All the body’s organs make large connective tissue protein and carbohydrate molecules in their cells, which then push these big molecules out through their membranes to form the extracellular matrix. “Extracellular” means “outside the cell,” and the word “matrix” refers to the complex alignments the molecules assume to give structure, strength, and elasticity to the groups of cells they support. The extracellular matrix is responsible for
the size and shape of
different organs. The addition of minerals like calcium to the matrix adds strength to tissues like bones and teeth. Proteins called elastins add flexibility where it is needed, such as in blood vessels and skin.
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