Have you ever considered how much a disease costs? It’s a strange prospect but when you consider the purely economic factors like how much it costs to treat the condition, any time off work, specialists foods or drinks, early retirement and even disability benefits you can start to see that some conditions have the potential to be very expensive indeed!
I’m not the first person to consider this, a joint study between the Stockholm School of Economics and the University of Lund (both in Sweden) looked into the potential costs that rheumatoid arthritis causes each year. It was shown that the largest and most widespread expense was patients leaving the workforce early and retiring because of chronic pain and a general lack of mobility. In total they found that each year in Western Europe we spend around 42 billion dollars because of rheumatoid arthritis alone. This is a massive expenditure and takes into account all money lost due to rheumatoid arthritis as well as cash spent in treating the condition in the first place.
But what is rheumatoid arthritis? Well, essentially it’s an autoimmune condition which targets the cartilage which is found in your joints. Your immune system relentlessly attacks the cartilage as if it were a foreign entity and this causes an inflammatory reaction which can lead to chronic pain and slow and steady loss of mobility. For the most part arthritis can be treated and held at bay but it’s not a condition which can be cured and with over 200 separate types of arthritis, it’s unlikely that we’ll see a full cure for the condition in our life times. It’s important to remember that diet and exercise can play a massive part in the treatment of arthritis, as with all chronic diseases more than just medication is required to manage them properly.
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