Rheumatoid arthritis is an inflammatory condition which affects the joints. It’s autoimmune in that it’s caused when our bodies immune systems mistake the cartilage found in our joints to be a foreign body and attack it relentlessly. This breaks down the cartilage and causes inflammation of the joints. Cartilage is the cushioning between bones without it the inflammation just gets worse, lessens mobility in the effected joints and causes chronic pain. Rheumatoid arthritis is chronic but treatable, there are all sorts of pharmaceutical and holistic options for treating the condition and though you may never be fully rid of it, you can certainly live with it.
A lot of studies have been done into arthritis in its many forms because it’s so common. There are over 200 types of arthritis, much like cancer and it’ll take a cure for each individual condition to ‘cure arthritis’ on the whole. This is why so much time and effort is spent on it every year and why there are so many options open to those who have the condition.
A study in Japan has recently looked into the effects of rheumatoid arthritis on the body, beyond those of the condition itself. They were looking largely at the spine as this is such an important component to our mobility on the whole.
The findings of the study were worrying. It turned out that almost half of the patients who, at the start of the study suffered from rheumatoid arthritis but no spinal conditions were suffering from spinal instabilities and damage by the end of the study.
This was an initial study and as such the exact correlation between the two conditions is still a bit of an unknown. The scientists involved are currently setting up a study to work out exactly how rheumatoid arthritis causes spinal issue, hopefully this knowledge will help prevent them in the future!
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