Evidence suggests the answer is yes.
For a long time there wasn t much to base an opinion on. The disease somehow tricks the body s immune system into attacking body organs as if they were foreign, causing painful and sometimes dangerous inflammations. More than 500 lupus patients are monitored at the Johns Hopkins Lupus Center. Dr. Michelle Petri says a close study of the 40 or so men in the program revealed something that no one had been able to prove. For the most part every difference we found between men and women with lupus was in the direction of men having a more severe form.