Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disorder that can affect more than just your joints. In some people, the condition can damage a wide variety of body systems, including the skin, eyes, lungs, heart, and blood vessels. An autoimmune disorder, rheumatoid arthritis occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks your own body’s tissues.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) causes joint inflammation and pain. It happens when the immune system doesn’t work properly and attacks the lining of the joints, called the synovium. The disease commonly affects the hands, knees, or ankles, and usually the same joint on both sides of the body, such as both hands or both knees.
Mayo Clinic explains that rheumatoid arthritis, or RA, is an autoimmune and inflammatory disease, meaning that your immune system attacks healthy cells in your body by mistake, causing inflammation (painful swelling) in the affected parts of the body. RA mainly attacks the joints, usually many joints at once. RA commonly affects joints in the hands, wrists, and knees.
What is rheumatoid arthritis? According to CDC, Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that is chronic (ongoing). It occurs in the joints on both sides of your body, which makes it different from other types of arthritis. You may have symptoms of pain and inflammation in your fingers, hands, wrists, knees, ankles, feet, and toes.
Symptoms of RA include pain or aching in more than one joint, stiffness in more than one joint, tenderness and swelling in more than one joint, and the same joint symptoms on both sides of the body, leading to loss of joint function.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a systemic autoimmune disease characterized by inflammatory arthritis and extra-articular involvement. It is a chronic inflammatory disorder caused in many cases by the interaction between genes and environmental factors, including tobacco, that primarily involves synovial joints.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a long-term (chronic) disease that causes inflammation of the joints. The inflammation can be so severe that it affects how the joints and other parts of the body look and function. In the hand, RA may cause deformities in the joints of the fingers, making moving your hands difficult.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory disease largely affecting synovial joints. It typically affects the small joints of the hands and the feet and usually both sides equally and symmetrically, although any synovial joint can be affected. It is a systemic disease and so can affect the whole body, including the heart, lungs, and eyes.
