Ladies have never had it easy. Child birth, breast cancer and now it seems arthritis has it in for them as well! With as many as three times as many women suffering from the condition than their male counterparts it almost unfair really and if it wasn’t for the male predilection towards heart disease which doesn’t get to women until a decade later, I’m sure it would be!
Arthritis as a whole is a bit of a mysterious condition, we know a lot of things which can add to your likelihood of getting the inflammatory condition but we’re still not certain of the overbearing trigger factor.
Scientists have recently discovered 14 new genes which can lead to a person developing rheumatoid arthritis which is the second most common type of the condition in the UK and affects more the 400,000 people throughout the country. It’s thought that there are several of these genes which are specific to the female X-chromosome which are triggers and that this is why ladies are three times more likely to suffer from the condition as men are.
The discovery of these 14 new genes is great news as it means that more drugs can be developed which target them specifically, meaning for the third of the arthritic population for whom regular treatment doesn’t work, there could well be a ray of hope. The findings are very new and as such it’ll take a fair amount of time to develop and enact these new drugs and/or treatments but given time we could see a vast increase in the quality of life of arthritic people.
Talk to your GP if you’re interested in what options may become available to you in the future, you never know if they’ll help out everyone’s different and reactions to treatment differently after all.
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