Rheumatoid arthritis

Rare card · No. 33229

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a long-term autoimmune disorder that primarily affects joints. It typically results in warm, swollen, and painful joints. Pain and stiffness often worsen following rest. Most commonly, the wrist and hands are involved, with the same joints typically involved on both sides of the body. The disease may also affect other parts of the body, including skin, eyes, lungs, heart, nerves, and blood. This may result in a low red blood cell count, inflammation around the lungs, fever, low energy and inflammation around the heart. Often, symptoms come on gradually over weeks to months. It is divided into three phases : a phase of disease risk, an asymptomatic autoimmunity phase where individuals carry autoantibodies for post-translationally modified proteins and the symptomatic phase, where individuals develop synovitis (acute joint inflammation). The cause of rheumatoid arthritis is believed to involve a combination of genetic and environmental factors. The underlying...

Read on Wikipedia · Image James Heilman, MD, CC BY-SA 3.0