Rheumatoid Arthritis Causes and Diagnosis
Rheumatoid arthritis affects the many joints in our bodies and is not prominent in any one place over the other. This type of arthritis also affects the heart, lungs and the blood as well. Rheumatoid arthritis is the inflammation of synovium, or joint lining. The pain suffered from this extremely painful disease can be from stiffness, redness, swelling, and warmth. The joints that are affected over time may lose their shape and will result in the loss of normal everyday movement. Rheumatoid arthritis generally starts around the age of twenty and can last a lifetime. This type of disease typically flares and can have active symptoms or in remissions with no symptoms or only a few of them.
Rheumatoid arthritis causes joint pain and swelling, redness, warmth and can affect other organs of the body like skin, eyes, lungs, heart, blood, nerves or kidneys. Rheumatoid arthritis affects approximately 1% of the population, in which 75% of those diagnosed are women. The exact cause of rheumatoid arthritis is unknown, but scientists attribute this disease to a combination of genetic, environmental and hormonal factors.
With rheumatoid arthritis, something seems to trigger the immune system to attack itself. This could happen after a sudden trauma or a surgery, and the severity is not the same in all people. Some theories suggest that a virus or bacteria alter the immune system. Therefore, since the root cause of rheumatoid arthritis is so different from osteoarthritis, of course the treatment and remedies are different also.
No one is positive on the exact cause of why people get rheumatoid arthritis, but many scientists believe there are a lot of common factors among the people that suffer from rheumatoid arthritis. Hereditary and genetics is a major contribution to the onset of rheumatoid arthritis, the particular genes that are passed from one family member to next.
It is suspected that susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis is an inherited trait. The exact cause of rheumatoid arthritis is unknown, but it’s believed to be the body’s immune system attacking the tissue that lines your joints. But rheumatoid arthritis can also affect young children and adults older than age 50.
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