A new study finds that one side effect of lupus could also make patients with the autoimmune condition more vulnerable to a skin infection, or spreading the infection to others.

In the paper, published in the Journal of Investigative Dermatology, researchers found that 50% of skin rashes in patients with lupus contained an abnormally high presence of a common bacteria responsible for skin infections: staphylococcus aureus, or more commonly known as staph.

“Fifty percent of the patients we investigated were colonized by staph, which means the person with the rash is a carrier for the bacteria and can spread it to others,” says J. Michelle Kahlenberg, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of rheumatology at Michigan Medicine and senior author of the paper.

“In addition, we identified that a protein in the skin of patients with lupus, called interferon, increases the stickiness of staph aureus to their skin.”

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