Q: My mother was diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) 14 years back. She is taking medicines as prescribed by the doctor. My question is that there has been a recent study, which has been published on the Internet, which says that the root cause of Lupus is now known and the cure is also available. I am attaching the link (http://www.earnedmedia.org/berean0113.htm ) where you can click and see yourself. I here want to reconfirm is this true or what are your inputs on this study.

A:Being a scientist-physician specialising in SLE and other autoimmune connective tissue diseases, I strongly believe in science of medicine. Science means unbiased TRUTH proven by all the available evidence that is not affected by any confounding factors. The compound that you have mentioned (and gave the web site) has not passed through the phase-I, phase - II or phase - III drug trials, not been approved for use by Federal Drug Administration of USA to the best of my knowledge AND, I remain quite updated, attend most of the international meetings in this field and read the latest issues of almost all the scientific medical journals in this field. To my utter surprise, the compound has not even been mentioned even once in any of the peer-reviewed scientific journals listed in National Library of Medicine of USA (PubMed list). It is not listed in Cochrane Reviews as well. To me it sounds like all the usual miracle cure story including the glucosamine - arthritis story (you may know that after 3 years of rigorous trial glucosamine has finally been found to be ineffective - results presented at the American College of Rheumatology Annual Meeting in November 2005). After a few years of noises (and some people becoming very rich in the process) the story dies down. I hope and pray that I am wrong and this medicine passes all the randomised trials and get FDA clearance for SLE. Till then, I strongly recommend that one should ONLY practice evidence-based medicine. And, Class-A evidence comes out only from randomised double-blind placebo-controlled cross-over studies. I would suggest that let this compound pass through this internationally accepted scientific scrutiny and use it ONLY once it has cleared all such hurdles.