Ruth Wilson doesn’t look sick yet “everywhere hurts all the time” – because her immune system is attacking her own body.

The Massachusetts woman has lupus, nicknamed the disease of 1,000 faces for its variety of symptoms — one of a rogues’ gallery of autoimmune diseases that affect tens of millions of people and are a big medical mystery. Now researchers are decoding the biology behind these debilitating diseases in hopes of eventually treating the causes, not just the symptoms.

Wilson's journey offers a glimpse of the burden.

It took six years of symptoms — fevers, rashes, pain, swelling and, finally, her kidneys starting to fail — to get diagnosed. Over a decade later, Wilson relies on a handful of pills every morning and a monthly IV treatment to tamp down – not eliminate – a chron

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