Rheumatoid Arthritis Symptoms, Signs and Causes.

What is rheumatoid arthritis ?

RA is an autoimmune and inflammatory disease, it means your immune system will attack healthy cells in the body by mistake, which cause inflammation in the body parts which are affected.

Rheumatoid Arthritis mainly attacks many joints at a time. Rheumatoid arthritis always affects the joints in the wrists, hands and knees. The lining of the joint will become inflamed, which cause damage to joint tissue in a joint. The above tissue damage will cause a long lasting chronic pain, unsteadiness , and deformity.

Rheumatoid Arthritis also affect other tissues of whole body and will cause problems in the organs like lungs, heart, and eyes.

 

Signs and Symptoms of Rheumatoid Arthritis.

The people with rheumatoid arthritis, when the symptoms get worse, it is called flares, and  when the symptoms get better, it is called as remission.

• Signs and symptoms of Rheumatoid arthritis
• Pain in more than one joint
• Stiffness in more than one joint
• Swelling and tenderness will be in more than one joint
• Same symptoms will be on both sides of the body (like both in hands or both in knees)
• Weight loss
• Fever
• Fatigue or tiredness
• Weakness

 

What causes RA?

Rheumatoid Arthritis is a result of immune response in which body’s immune system will attack its own healthy cells. The exact causes of RA are not known, but some factors will increase the risk in developing the disease.

Risk factors for RA?

Many of Experts done Research and studied about genetic and environmental factors to minimize risk of person’s in developing RA.

Main Characteristics which increase risk

• Age: RA may begin at any age, but it will show its effect while your age increases. The RA is very high in their sixties.
• Sex: Maximum number of new cases occurred in women compared to men.
• Genetics traits: The one who born with specific genes are likely to develop Rheumatoid Arthirits. This genes, known as HLA (human leukocyte antigen) class II genotypes, will make your arthritis worse. The risk of RA will be high when people with these genes are exposed to environmental factors like smoking.
• Smoking: Many of the studies show that smoking of tobacco will increases the person’s risk in developing RA and will make the disease worsen.
• History of births: The women who has never given birth will be at a greater risk in developing RA.
• Early Exposures in Life: Some previous life exposures also increase the risk of developing RA in the adulthood.  For example, The children whose mothers smoked previously has doubled the risk of developing RA as adults.
• Obesity: Having obese may increase the risk of developing RA. Studies examining the role of obesity also found that the person with overweight has risk of developing RA.

Main Characteristics that will decrease risk

As the risk factors above which might increase the risk of developing RA, at least one of the characteristic may decrease the risk of developing RA.

• Breast feeding: The women who has breastfeed in their infants has decreased risk of developing RA.

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