Rheumatoid arthritis causes
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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]; Associate Editor(s)-in-Chief: Aarti Narayan, M.B.B.S [2]
Causes
- The cause of RA is still unknown to this day.
- In considering possible causes, it is important to distinguish between the cause(s) that trigger the inflammatory process, and those that may permit it to persist and even progress from milder to more severe forms of inflammation.
- Thus, it has long been suspected that certain infections could be triggers for this disease. As in other autoimmune diseases, the "mistaken identity" theory suggests that an offending organism causes an immune response that leaves behind antibodies that are specific to that organism.
- The antibodies are not specific enough, though. They begin an immune attack against, in this case, the synovium, because some molecule in the synovium "looks like" a molecule on the offending organism that created the initial immune reaction - this phenomenon is called molecular mimicry.