Rheumatoid arthritis overview
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Editor-In-Chief: C. Michael Gibson, M.S., M.D. [1]
Overview
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is traditionally considered a chronic, inflammatoryautoimmune disorder that causes the immune system to attack the joints. It is a disabling and painful inflammatory condition, which can lead to substantial loss of mobility due to pain and joint destruction. RA is a systemic disease, often affecting extra-articular tissues throughout the body including the skin, blood vessels, heart, lungs, and muscles.
The name is derived from the Greek word rheumatos which means "flowing", and this initially gave rise to the term 'rheumatic fever', an illness that can follow throat infections and which includes joint pain. The suffix -oid means "resembling", i.e. resembling rheumatic fever. Arthr means "joint" and the suffix -itis, a "condition involving inflammation". Thus, rheumatoid arthritis was a form of joint inflammation that resembled rheumatic fever. Rheumatoid arthritis appears to have been described in paintings more than a century before the first detailed medical description of the condition in 1800 by Landre-Beauvais.[1]
Historical Perspective
Rheumatoid arthritis signs and symptoms are noticed by Augustin Jacob Landre-Beauvais, a resident physician at the Saltpetriere asylum in France, in 1800, He named it as Goutte Asthenique Primitive or Primary Asthenic Gout. The name Rheumatoid arthritis coined by Archibald Garrod in 1890. HLA-DR locus present on chromosome 6 is involved in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis.
Classification
There is no established system for the classification of rheumatoid arthritis. Depending on the presentation of rheumatoid arthritis, it is classified into typical classic rheumatoid arthritis and palindromic rheumatism. There is a classification criterion for the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis according to American College of Rheumatology, it uses 4 parameters such as joint involvement, serology, duration of symptoms and acute phase reactants. If the score is more than 6 it is called as definite rheumatoid arthritis.