“The technical term is lupus nephritis. It’s a rare form of Lupus that’s just attacking my kidneys,”Nick Cannon explained to Robin Roberts on Good Morning America earlier this month. At the end of 2011, the entertainer cut short his family vacation so that he could be hospitalized for mild kidney failure. Doctors discovered later that the problems were more widespread than they’d thought. 

“They thought it was just kidney disease, and then they were trying to figure out why my immune system was attacking my kidneys, and that was sort of the root of it all”, the star adds. It took a related spate of unexplained blood clots in Nick’s lungs for doctors to realize that Nick’s immune system was the culprit.

Nick Cannon, along his wife, singer and actress Mariah Carey and their infant twins have become the public face of a family afflicted with Lupus. Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE), or Lupus, is a chronic, inflammatory, autoimmune disease that mainly affects women of childbearing age. Its symptoms range from unexplained fever, swollen joints, and skin rashes to severe organ damage of the kidneys, lungs, or central nervous system. Though Nick Cannon’s Lupus nephritis is currently the most visible case of a Lupus-related disorder, they are actually rare amongst men. The most vulnerable group in our population is African American women, who are three times as likely as Caucasian women to get lupus. African American women also tend to develop lupus at a younger age, and have more severe symptoms than Caucasian women.