Arthritis

Arthritis is the swelling and tenderness of one or more joints. The main symptoms of arthritis are joint pain and stiffness, which typically worsen with age. The most common types of arthritis are osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Arthritis is a disease that affects your joints (areas where your bones meet and move). Arthritis usually involves inflammation or degeneration (breakdown) of your joints. These changes can cause pain when you use the joint.

Arthritis is most common in the following areas of the body:

• Feet.
• Hands.
• Hips.
• Knees.
• Lower back.

Osteoarthritis causes cartilage — the hard, slippery tissue that covers the ends of bones where they form a joint — to break down. Rheumatoid arthritis is a disease in which the immune system attacks the joints, beginning with the lining of joints.

Uric acid crystals, which form when there's too much uric acid in your blood, can cause gout. Infections or underlying disease, such as psoriasis or lupus, can cause other types of arthritis.

Treatments vary depending on the type of arthritis. The main goals of arthritis treatments are to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life.

Symptoms

The most common signs and symptoms of arthritis involve the joints. Depending on the type of arthritis, signs and symptoms may include:

· Pain

· Stiffness

· Swelling

· Redness

· Decreased range of motion

Types

The two main types of arthritis — osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis — damage joints in different ways.

Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis, or “wear and tear” arthritis, which develops when joint cartilage breaks down from repeated stress.

The most common type of arthritis, osteoarthritis involves wear-and-tear damage to a joint's cartilage — the hard, slick coating on the ends of bones where they form a joint. Cartilage cushions the ends of the bones and allows nearly frictionless joint motion, but enough damage can result in bone grinding directly on bone, which causes pain and restricted movement. This wear and tear can occur over many years, or it can be hastened by a joint injury or infection.

Osteoarthritis also causes changes in the bones and deterioration of the connective tissues that attach muscle to bone and hold the joint together. If cartilage in a joint is severely damaged, the joint lining may become inflamed and swollen.

Rheumatoid arthritis

In rheumatoid arthritis, the body's immune system attacks the lining of the joint capsule, a tough membrane that encloses all the joint parts. This lining (synovial membrane) becomes inflamed and swollen. The disease process can eventually destroy cartilage and bone within the joint.

Arthritis is a broad term that describes more than 100 different joint conditions. Other types of arthritis include:

• Ankylosing spondylitis, or arthritis of the spine (usually your lower back).
• Juvenile arthritis (JA), a disorder where the immune system attacks the tissue around joints. JA typically affects children 16 or younger.
• Gout, a disease that causes hard crystals of uric acid to form in your joints.
• Psoriatic arthritis, joint inflammation that develops in people with psoriasis (autoimmune disorder that causes skin irritation).

Symptoms

Joint pain, stiffness, and swelling are the most common symptoms of arthritis. Your symptoms may also feel worse in the morning when you get out of bed or upon standing up after you’ve been resting.

Other symptoms of osteoarthritis include:

• limited range of motion that sometimes goes away after movement
• clicking or popping with bending
• muscle weakness around the joint
• instability or buckling of the joint
• bony growths in the fingers
• grating or scraping feeling in the knees

Other symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis include:

• morning stiffness that can last 30 minutes or more
• more than one affected joint
• onset in smaller joints like feet and hands
• same joints on both sides of the body are affected
• fatigue
• low-grade fever
• inflammation of the eyes and mouth
• inflammation of the heart muscle and blood vessels
• low red blood cell count

Causes

Different types of arthritis have different causes. For instance, gout is the result of too much uric acid in your body. But for other types of arthritis, the exact cause is unknown. You may develop arthritis if you:

· wear and tear of a joint from overuse

• age (OA is most common in adults over age 50)
• injuries
• obesity
• autoimmune disorders
• genes or family history
• muscle weakness