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What is Rheumatoid Arthritis?

Summary & Participants

More than two million people have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in the United States. What is this disease, and how does it affect your joints?

Medically Reviewed On: July 18, 2008

Webcast Transcript

ANNOUNCER: More than two million people have been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in the United States.

STEVEN ABRAMSON, MD: It’s one of the autoimmune diseases, which means the body attacks its own tissues. In this case, the tissues are the tissues that surround the joints, and initially it can cause swelling and stiffness. But with time, this inflammation actually damages the joints and can cause deformities of the joints and disability.

ANNOUNCER: While rheumatoid arthritis affects people of all ages and races, it is more common in women.

ERIC RUDERMAN, MD: Probably about three quarters women to one quarter men, although that varies in different age groups. It is a disease of younger patients. So the time that people get rheumatoid arthritis is typically in their 30s and 40s, which is much earlier than most people think of arthritis beginning. Children can actually get rheumatoid arthritis, as well as older people, so it can start at any age. But the most important thing to recognize is that it starts in 30s and 40s.

ANNOUNCER: There can also be a genetic basis to the disease.

CLIFTON O. BINGHAM, MD: What we understand now is that patients with rheumatoid arthritis have some underlying genetic susceptibilities to the disease itself. We see the disease cluster in families and run in families. It certainly doesn't mean that it's 100% inherited, but genetics probably account for about 30% -- 20 to 30% of the disease itself.

ANNOUNCER: Symptoms may vary from person to person. The symptoms typically develop gradually and are often marked by periods of flares and remissions.

ALISA KOCK, MD: Signs and symptoms include initially swelling of the joints, particularly the small joints of the hands and the feet.

ERIC RUDERMAN, MD: You see swelling, you see redness. Sometimes they’ll feel sort of squishy, the joints, as if there’s fluid in them. Typically people will have pain in those joints. They’ll feel like they don’t move very well. They’ll be stiff, particularly in the mornings. Stiffness in the mornings is a very common presentation or common symptom. It tends to be symmetrical, so that if a certain joint on one side of the body is involved, it’ll usually be involved on the other side of the body, although that’s not 100%, and it’s not always the exact same joints on one side as the other.

ANNOUNCER: Unlike osteoarthritis, which affects only your bones and joints, rheumatoid arthritis can affect the whole body.

ERIC RUDERMAN, MD: You can get lung involvement, with fluid around the lungs. You can get fluid around the heart. You can get nodules, which is inflammation or swelling along tendons in different places. People feel very fatigued, typically, because of the inflammation. They feel sick. Their whole body is involved, and the fatigue and the difficulty getting around is often a bigger symptom for people than the pain in the individual joints.

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