Scientists have recently defined a feature of rheumatoid arthritis which until not long ago perplexed them a great deal. It was always a puzzle why people with, what may appear to be a, a non-severe stage of inflammation of the joints suffer from an inconsistent level of pain. They’ll be in agony before the arthritis is nearly as bad as it could be. It’s only in the last few months the connection has been found and an explanation has been forged.
A form of pain amplification occurs due to the fact that conditioned pain modulation (CPM), which is a feature of the nervous system that helps us to modulated the levels of pain we feel, diminishes and causes the pain we feel to be way more potent than it should be. This isn’t just true of pain that rheumatoid arthritis sufferers will have in the joints, it could well be that the slightest touches on certain areas of their skin could start to cause them pain too.
It’s still not 100% clear why and how arthritis affects the nervous system in such a profound way but it’s an area which is receiving a lot of attention and we could see progress in the next year or so and a solution this mystery at last.