Defining Rheumatoid Arthritis

Defining Rheumatoid Arthritis to most people arthritis means pain and stiffness in the joins. Indeed, if you trace the word arthritis to its Greek roots you will discover that it means inflammation (itis) of the joints (arthron). In practice the word is used to describe more than one hundred joint disorders, many of which are not caused by inflammation at all. There are several forms of arthritis which do begin as significant inflammation in the …

…joints, wrists, elbows, shoulders, some joints in the neck, jaw, hips, knees, ankles, feet, and toe joints. RA most often affects the body symmetrically, meaning that arthritis on one side of the body affects the other side equally on the opposite side. One condition that is often confused with RA is osteoarthritis (OA) , also called degenerative joint disease (DJD). OA is quite different from RA. For one thing, OA is much more common than RA.