Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid Arthritis is a very painful autoimmune disease - in which the body's immune system attacks the joints and slowly destroys them while also causing inflammation that is debilitating. Usually people who are afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis will be unable to work within ten to fifteen years of its diagnosis and onset - but some drugs can prolong the destructive effects of rheumatoid arthritis. Rheumatoid Arthritis comes in two forms which are both destructive and painful. The first form is in the joints - which is called Articular Rheumatoid Arthritis and the second is outside of the joints - or Extra-articular Rheumatoid Arthritis.

In Articular Rheumatoid Arthritis the problems are exclusively in the joints, and usually it afflicts many joints all over the body, since the body thinks that the joints are its enemies. As the joints are destroyed they become less mobile and develop significantly noticeable defects that are very painful - in additions nodules may form in the most common cases which are painful and found around the joints of the bones afflicted. To top all of this off rheumatoid arthritis also can cause some vascular diseases that range from benign discoloration of the skin to being as severe as vascular thrombosis. Extra-articular Rheumatoid Arthritis can affect the kidneys, the eyes, spinal cord injury, nerve degeneration around the joints, and the lungs causing fibrosis or pulmonary effusion (which is an excess fluid buildup that accumulates in the pleural cavity around the lungs).

RA afflicts around one our of every ten thousand people and usually afflicts people over the age of twenty - with the chance of affliction increasing as the person grows older - women are more likely to be afflicted at a rate of two to five times more than men and it is seen as an inherited condition, although it is not entirely clear which exact genes can cause it - although more than likely it is a predisposition to an infection or food allergies.