Causes of Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis is a common disease among young people. Rheumatoid arthritis is a manifestation of rheumatic fever in the joints. Once a person suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, he or she is prone to various symptoms. For example, rheumatoid arthritis can cause muscle pain and irregular fever. Rheumatoid arthritis can also cause joint pain and skin and mucous membrane symptoms.

What are the specific causes of rheumatoid arthritis? Only when we understand the causes of rheumatoid arthritis can we make appropriate prevention and targeted treatments for rheumatoid arthritis based on the causes.

Rheumatoid arthritis is a common acute or chronic connective tissue inflammation. It may recur and affect the heart. The clinical symptoms are migratory soreness, heaviness and pain in joints and muscles. It is an allergic disease. It is one of the main manifestations of rheumatic fever, and often begins with acute fever and joint pain.

Typical manifestations are mild or moderate fever and migratory polyarthritis. The affected joints are mostly large joints such as the knees, ankles, shoulders, elbows, and wrists. It is common for the disease to spread from one joint to another. The lesions are locally red, swollen, burning, and extremely painful. Some patients also have several joints affected at the same time. Atypical patients only have joint pain without other inflammatory manifestations. Acute inflammation generally subsides in 2 to 4 weeks without leaving sequelae, but it often recurs. If rheumatic activity affects the heart, myocarditis may occur and even residual heart valve disease may occur.

Causes of Rheumatoid Arthritis:

The cause of rheumatoid arthritis is not yet fully understood. Based on the analysis of symptoms, epidemiology and immunology, it is believed that it is closely related to human hemolytic streptococcal infection. It is currently noted that viral infection also has a certain relationship with this disease.

Clinical manifestations

1. Pain

Joint pain is the most common symptom of rheumatism. Pain may occur in joints throughout the body, but pain in the limbs and trunk may cause lesions in the internal organs and nervous system.

2. Muscle pain

Muscles may also experience pain symptoms, and may also experience muscle weakness, elevated muscle enzymes, and myogenic damage, such as systemic lupus erythematosus, mixed connective tissue disease, dermatomyositis, etc.

3. Irregular fever

Before rheumatism appears, there will be irregular fever, no chills, and antibiotic treatment will be ineffective. At the same time, there will be a rapid erythrocyte sedimentation rate. Systemic lupus erythematosus, acute neutrophilic febrile dermatosis, adult Still's disease, and seborrheic dermatitis can all have fever as the first symptom.

4. Skin and mucous membrane symptoms

Dermatomyositis, Sjögren's syndrome, Behcet's disease, and panniculitis may cause rash, oral ulcers, skin ulcers, reticular cyanosis, and eye symptoms.

5. Raynaud's sign

The fingertips will turn white when exposed to cold or when the mood changes, then turn purple, and finally turn red and be accompanied by numbness, pain, and severe skin ulcers. This can be seen in rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, and mixed connective tissue disease.

6. Abnormal autoantibody blood indicators

Anti-ENA antibodies, anti-ds-DNA antibodies, antiplatelet antibodies, antinuclear antibodies, anticardiolipin antibodies, rheumatoid factor, etc.

Above we introduced what rheumatoid arthritis is and its clinical manifestations. Suffering from rheumatoid arthritis can cause many kinds of harm to the body, so we must recognize the causes of rheumatoid arthritis and do a good job in preventing and treating this disease.