Contents
What is arthritis?
Arthritis is a term for inflammation of the joints, not a specific disease. It can be both the main disease and the manifestation of any other disease (spondylitis, rheumatism). However, it can be cured and offers a favorable prognosis. This article will consider the most affordable and effective methods, with proven effectiveness.
The risk group includes every person who has crossed the line of 65 years. Among pensioners, the number of people suffering from this pathology is more than 60% …
But do not think that the disease is exclusively senile. It can affect people at a younger age and even children. It all depends on the causes of pathological changes in the joints.
Tens of millions of people around the world are believed to suffer from the symptoms of arthritis, and, according to recent studies, this number is increasing year by year. According to data (CDC), the figure is as much as 22,7% of the total adult population..
The very first signs of arthritis
Do you have arthritis? Only a doctor can tell you for sure, but There Are 4 Early Symptoms of Arthritis That Should Prompt You to See a Rheumatologist:
Pain. The pain may be constant or may come and go. It can appear both at rest and during movement. The pain can be in one part of the body or in many different parts.
Edema. The skin over the affected joint becomes red and swollen and warm to the touch. Swelling that lasts 3 days or longer, or occurs more than three times a month, should prompt you to see a doctor.
Rigidity. This is a classic symptom, especially when you wake up in the morning or sit still for a long time. Morning stiffness that lasts longer than an hour is a clear early sign of arthritis.
Difficulty bending a joint. If you find it difficult or painful to get up from a chair, this is a sign of early arthritis.
Symptoms, depending on the type of arthritis
Because the disease is most often chronic, symptoms may come and go or persist over time. Different types of arthritis have different symptoms, they are all divided into 7 main groups, and it is important to know which one you have.
Osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis is the most common type of joint disease, has a degenerative-destructive character. This is the “wear and tear” that occurs when your joints are overworked. This usually happens with age, but can also occur due to joint injuries or excess weight that puts extra stress on the joints.
What’s happening? The gradual destruction of cartilage leads to the fact that pain increases, then the shape of the joint changes, bone growths appear. The disease is dangerous because with it the bones and cartilage that have undergone destruction will no longer be able to recover on their own. The disease begins with coarsening of the cartilage. After that, the body may try to replace the lost synovial fluid that surrounds the joint. Then the following might happen:
Osteophytes are small bone growths that will begin to grow into the joint.
The amount of thick fluid inside the joint may increase.
The bursa can stretch and the joint can lose its shape.
How is it manifested? It all depends on which joint is affected:
Deep aching pain.
Depending on which joints are involved, it can be difficult to dress, comb your hair, pick up things, bend over, squat, or climb stairs.
Morning stiffness that usually lasts less than 30 minutes.
Pain when walking.
Stiffness in joints after rest.
Rheumatoid arthritis
This is a systemic autoimmune disease with damage to connective tissues and joints in an erosive-destructive type. Sometimes it can spread to internal organs. In 70% of cases, the patient becomes disabled. This is a very serious disease with an etiology not fully understood, it mainly occurs in people in middle and older age (40-50 years), in women three times more often than in men.
What’s happening? The immune system begins to attack its own healthy joints, which leads to their inflammation. In the future, this can lead to serious damage to the joint. Throughout the illness, a person experiences general malaise, loss of appetite, weakness. During periods of exacerbation, an increase in body temperature is observed.
How is it manifested? May appear gradually or start suddenly.
Pain, stiffness and swelling in hands, wrists, elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles, feet, jaws and neck.
More than one swollen joint. RA usually affects several joints at once.
Symmetrical drawing. For example, if the knuckles of your fingers on your left hand become inflamed, then it is likely that they will also ache on your right hand.
morning stiffness can last for hours or even most of the day. You may be constantly tired, your appetite will decrease.
Spondylosis
Spondylosis is a term that describes a range of conditions that cause pain and swelling, mainly around the joints of the spine. There is inflammation of small pieces of connective tissue, called enthesis. These are tough little cords that connect ligaments and tendons to bones.
Ankylosing Spondylitis
This is a type of spondyloarthritis that causes pain and swelling around the spine. In the people, this disease is known as Bechterew’s disease.
What’s happening? In this disease, in response to inflammation around the spine, the body produces more of the mineral calcium. Normally, calcium is used by the body to build strong bones, but in ankylosing spondylitis, it causes the bones in the spine to grow and this causes pain and stiffness. The pain, as a rule, worsens in the second half of the night, and in the morning there is swelling of the back, which lasts more than half an hour. There are medications that can slow this process down. Staying active will help minimize spinal stiffness, while maintaining good posture will help prevent spinal bending.
How is it manifested? Characterized by complaints of pain in the sacrum and lower back, stiffness that occurs at rest, especially in the second half of the night and closer to the morning, and decreases with movement. Decreased flexibility in the spine. As the disease progresses, there is an increase in the expansion of the boundaries of the pain syndrome to the entire spine. One of the characteristic symptoms is arched curvature of the spine and chronic stoop.
Psoriatic arthritis
This is another type of spondylitis, which is an autoimmune disease. It is characterized by the gradual development of the disease, swelling at the site of the lesion and a local increase in temperature.
What’s happening? In the place of inflammation of the joint, red spots appear, which cause discomfort to a person in the form of itching and peeling. The nail plates are also affected in parallel, they begin to split. Any joint can be affected, but the fingers are more commonly affected. At the same time, they thicken and resemble sausages in shape. Pain at the initial stages of the development of the disease does not appear, and if it is present, then only in the morning. According to statistics, only 10-30% of patients with psoriasis also suffer from arthritis.
How is it manifested? Swollen fingers and toes. The nails are often discolored in such patients.
Juvenile idiopathic arthritis
Juvenile idiopathic arthritis, also called “Still’s disease” (also known as “children’s arthritis”), is a pathology that affects children under the age of 16 years. The causes are not exactly known, the nature of the disease is chronic, constantly progressing. In some patients, internal organs also suffer, which leads to disability, and sometimes death of the child.
Gouty arthritis
This is a type of inflammatory arthritis that can cause painful swelling in the joints, usually in the big toe.
This also includes calcium crystal deposition disease.
What’s happening? The disease develops as a result of deposits of uric acid, which collects in the joint cavity. Uric acid is not excreted from the body, does not dissolve in the blood, but crystallizes and accumulates near the joints, which leads to pain and inflammation. A gouty attack often catches a person at night. To give impetus to the disease can either eat a large amount of meat, alcohol.
How is it manifested? Often you wake up with sudden, sharp pain in your big toe after drinking a lot of alcohol. During an attack, it is impossible to touch the inflamed area, as the person experiences severe pain, which is accompanied by swelling and redness of the skin. The body temperature remains normal, the attack passes as suddenly as it began. The total duration of a gout attack is 3 to 10 days, even if you don’t treat it. If gout is left untreated for too long, it can affect your joints and kidneys, and the attacks themselves become more frequent and intense.
Stages
There are 4 stages of arthritis:
There are practically no manifestations of the disease. The first signs of inflammation can be detected only with an X-ray examination. From time to time, a person experiences stiffness in the area of the affected joints and a slight pain that appears during physical exertion.
The inflammation progresses, the articular tissues become thinner, erosions appear on the heads of the bones. External signs: hyperemia of the skin and swelling of the tissues surrounding the joints. When moving, you can hear a characteristic crunch.
Joint tissues begin to collapse, which leads to their deformation. Mobility is sharply limited, the pain does not stop. The functionality of the limb is impaired, but at this stage, the loss of joint performance is to some extent compensated by increased muscle tone.
The joint completely loses mobility, the changes that have occurred to it are irreversible. The knee joints are characterized by the formation of contractures. If the disease affects the hip joints, ankylosis develops. In this case, the joint capsule is filled with bone or fibrous tissue, which leads to fusion of the bone heads.
Causes and risk factors
Depending on the variety and origin, the following reasons can be distinguished:
Infections, when harmful bacteria, fungi or viruses enter the body. Against this background, natural natural protection called immunity is turned on. But in case of malfunctions in its work, substances designed to fight pathogenic organisms begin to destroy healthy cells and attack the joints;
Various kinds of joint injuries are also often put as the cause of the development of the disease;
Professional sports or constant excessive stress on the joints can provoke inflammation in the joint. For example, the ankles suffer in basketball players, the wrists in tennis players, the joints of the fingers in masseurs;
Excess body weight;
Congenital dislocation of the hip;
Diseases of the nervous system;
Allergy;
Some other diseases, in particular tuberculosis, gonorrhea, dysentery, gout;
Disruptions in the endocrine system. In particular, hormonal changes in a woman’s body during menopause;
Genetic predisposition;
Vitamin deficiency and malnutrition;
Alcohol abuse;
Insect bites (when a biological poison enters the joint cavity);
Subcooling.
Risk factors that contribute to the appearance of arthritis:
Osteoarthritis is more common in people who put too much strain on their joints. For example, teachers, salespeople, surgeons and hairdressers. In football players, the hip joints are more often affected, in boxers – the joints of the hands. This includes those who are adherents of smoking, as well as overweight people;
Gout is more at risk for men over the age of 65. Also included are people with high blood pressure, overweight, excessive alcohol consumption, and those with kidney dysfunction;
Women are at greater risk, and those people in whose family a case of the development of this disease has already been observed;
Infectious people most often get sick with a diagnosis of HIV or gonorrhea. Often this type of pathology torments people with cancer, diabetes and lupus erythematosus;
Professional athletes suffer from traumatic arthritis to a greater extent. Regularly formed microcracks in the joints leads to the fact that they become inflamed.
Diagnostics
Before starting treatment, it is necessary to accurately diagnose and determine the type of disease, this requires an integrated approach that includes examination, obtaining laboratory data and instrumental diagnostic methods.
It is necessary to visit such doctors as a traumatologist, a rheumatologist, an infectious disease specialist, a phthisiatrician and a dermatologist. Each of the specialists will conduct a conversation with the patient, during which a detailed medical history will be collected. After an oral questioning, the doctor will examine the affected joint, check it for sensitivity, determine the degree of mobility and muscle tone. Only after that the patient will be sent to the laboratory for the necessary tests.
According to specific blood parameters, the doctor will be able to make a preliminary diagnosis:
A complete blood count is done in order to determine the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR). If the disease is in the acute stage, then the indicator will be increased. With bacterial arthritis, the number of leukocytes increases, and with allergic – eosinophils;
A biochemical blood test is done in order to determine the level of uric and sialic acids (an increase is typical for gout), as well as fibrogen (which indicates the presence of inflammation);
Immunological indicators will make it possible to suspect rheumatoid arthritis if the rheumatoid factor, the number of antinuclear and other antibodies, as well as circulating immune complexes are elevated.
The following diagnostic techniques are used as instrumental research methods:
X-ray, sometimes in several projections: in direct, lateral and oblique. This method is the main one for determining the stage of the disease, as well as its variety. X-ray helps to see joint damage, inflammatory processes affecting bone tissue, possible neoplasms and degenerative changes;
Ultrasound diagnostics is an auxiliary method in determining this disease. Most often, ultrasound is used to examine the degree of damage to large joints: shoulder, knee, elbow;
Computed tomography allows you to see the joint in several sections, both transverse and longitudinal. Also, using this method, you can determine the condition of soft tissues;
MRI gives a clear picture. Using this method, you can examine the state of bone structures and soft tissues in the most detailed way. Magnetic resonance imaging is more often used if there is damage to the intervertebral discs, nerve structures, ligaments, etc.;
Arthroscopy – invasive endoscopic diagnostic method. It is used to study the condition of the knee joint. Sometimes during this study, a biopsy of the affected tissues is performed, as well as the joint fluid for their subsequent study;
Contrast arthrography study the condition of the cartilage tissue, as well as the soft tissues surrounding the joint. Contraindications are the acute form of the disease and sensitivity to iodine preparations;
Myelography allows you to study the condition of the spine, as well as the spinal cord and its roots. Used in conjunction with CT.
Is it possible to restore cartilage tissue in a joint?
It is impossible to restore the destroyed cartilage tissue in the joint. At least with the help of drugs currently on the Russian market. However, this does not mean that they should not be taken. They allow you to stop the process of cartilage degeneration and prevent the disease from progressing. In addition, drugs relieve inflammation and pain, improving joint function. To achieve the optimal effect, treatment should be started at an early stage in the development of arthrosis.
Scientists do not stop trying to develop a drug that allows you to completely restore cartilage tissue in the joints, so it is possible that such drugs will actually appear in the near future. And now all patients with arthrosis need to strictly follow medical recommendations and engage in complex therapy for their disease. This is the only way to prevent complete destruction of the joint and disability.
[Video] Scientific analysis of the effectiveness of chondroprotectors from Boris Tsatsulin: