The Lupus Foundation of America’s Advocacy Day 2009 is coming up fast. This year’s event will take place on March 2 and 3 in Washington, D.C.

This is the 11th Advocacy Day, during which people with lupus, friends, family and other lupus advocates descend on the U.S. capital to urge lawmakers to fund further research, pass legislation – whatever they can – to help further the understanding of this disease, as well as find and create better treatment options.

This year’s Advocacy Day may focus on the 50th anniversary of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s last approval of a drug specifically for lupus. No drug targeted to the disease as been approved since 1959.

The event includes a meet and greet lunch, advocacy training sessions, and a dinner, featuring speaker Susan Manzi, M.D., MPH, LFA Board & Medical-Scientific Advisory Council Member, and Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

Those interested in registering for the event can do so on the LFA’s Web site.

Rheumatologist Don Thomas takes the stage for the next live lupus webchat from the Lupus Foundation of America. The chat takes place Jan. 14 at 3 p.m., and if past chats are any indication, this one will be just as worthwhile. Especially if you're newly diagnosed with lupus and full of questions you just can't bring yourself to ask your doc. Or you just don't have time to ask your doc in those five-minute patient exams!

You can log on to the chat in progress and/or submit a question before (or during) the chat on the Lupus Foundation of America's website.

For more information about being newly diagnosed, check out some of these features:

• What to ask your doc if you have lupus
• The Role of the Rheumatologist
• Living with Lupus

The National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver has discovered that patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) tend to have subtle problems with attention, memory and reasoning when compared to those without lupus. The research group studied 67 SLE patients free of psychiatric and neurologic disorders along with 29 healthy controls.

While the two groups showed no differences in overall brain function, SLE patients tests showed impairments in attention, memory, and reasoning. Specifically, those with lupus showed "significantly higher rates" of impairment on logical reasoning and verbal memory, along with greater impairment on visual attention and working memory.

The group is encouraging more study in what it is calling "subtle brain involvement" in lupus patients.

A popular blogger and former social security disability examiner, Tim Moore, recently added a post on his blog My Social Security Disability Blog providing information for those filing on the basis of lupus.

The social security administration recognizes lupus as a disability, but many people still have difficulty winning social security disability or disability benefits. The biggest obstacle to overcome is proving that one suffers from lupus, since it mimics so many other diseases, and convincing a disability examiner that symptoms are more severe than they appear.

Another obstacle: some examiners fail to understand the cyclical nature of lupus symptoms, and instead focus on recent medical records, which may or may not indicate that lupus is in an active phase.

To read more of Moore’s blog, visit Lupus and Social Security Disability Benefits.

But start with Are You Eligible for Social Security Disability? here on About Lupus.