Thursday, 4:30 PM
Study: Roxbury, Mattapan have higher levels of lupus
By Stephen Smith, GLOBE STAFF
Residents of Roxbury and Mattapan are more likely than people in any other Boston neighborhood to suffer from the painful auto-immune disease lupus, according to a state health report released Thursday night at a community forum.
The study, conducted by the Department of Public Health, could not determine conclusively why lupus rates are higher in Roxbury, but offered a provocative theory involving exposure to petroleum products in the environment.
After analyzing data on the incidence of lupus and the location of dangerous environmental sites, the researchers asked: Could African-Americans, already known to be predisposed to the disease, be placed at even greater risk if they once lived near gasoline stations or sites where petroleum products were dumped?
The study was prompted by concerns voiced by women living in Roxbury, Mattapan, and Dorchester. Why, they wanted to know, are so many of our friends and relatives coming down with this disease? The report represents the first time that public health authorities in Massachusetts have attempted to measure the impact of lupus neighborhood by neighborhood.
"All of a sudden, we saw see all these women in the black community who developed lupus," said Beverly Soares, a lupus patient and executive director of Women of Courage, an advocacy and educational group. "And we found out there were a lot of dump sites in the area."
In patients with lupus, the immune system cannot distinguish between dangerous, invading germs and healthy cells. In effect, the body attacks itself, with disease fighters known as antibodies taking aim at healthy tissue and muscles. The result can be howling pain, ricocheting from skin to joints to the heart, lungs, kidneys, and brain.
The cause of lupus remains a mystery, but its victims are not, according to national figures: Women are nine times more likely than men to be diagnosed with the illness. And African-American women are at the greatest risk of all, suffering the disease at a rate three to four times higher than white, non-Hispanic women.
