What causes rheumatism?

Rheumatism is a common disease in our human body, and the incidence rate of this rheumatism is relatively high, and this rheumatism is more common in middle-aged and elderly people. There are many causes of rheumatic disease, which is also a very important reason why many patients are still unclear about the cause of their illness. So, what causes rheumatism? This is actually not complicated for many doctors in related professions.

Although rheumatism is a common disease in our human body, it is very harmful to patients and often affects their normal life. Therefore, many rheumatic patients are still afraid of this disease. The treatment effect of rheumatism is not very good in current medicine, so it is necessary for everyone to understand the causes of rheumatism.

Rheumatism is a group of diseases that mainly affect joints, bones, muscles, blood vessels and related soft tissues or connective tissues, most of which are autoimmune diseases. The onset is often hidden and slow, the course of the disease is long, and most cases have a genetic predisposition. Both diagnosis and treatment are somewhat difficult; different autoantibodies can be detected in the blood, which may be related to different HLA subtypes; there is a good short-term or long-term relief response to non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), glucocorticoids and immunosuppressants.

Causes

1. Immune response: The body's stimulation of exogenous or endogenous antigens directly or through macrophage presentation activates the corresponding T cells, and some T cells produce a large number of various inflammatory cytokines, causing varying degrees of damage or destruction to various tissues and organs; some T cells then activate B cells to produce a large number of antibodies, which directly or combine with antigens to form immune complexes, causing damage or destruction to tissues or organs. In addition, monocyte chemoattractant proteins (such as MCP-1) produced by monocytes can also participate in the inflammatory response. Most rheumatic diseases, either due to exogenous antigens produced by infection or endogenous antigens produced in the body, can initiate or aggravate this autoimmune response, and a variety of antibodies may appear in the serum.

2. Genetic background: Recent studies have shown that some rheumatic diseases, especially connective tissue diseases, are closely related to genetics and patient susceptibility and disease expression, which has certain significance for early or atypical cases of the disease and prognosis; among them, HLA (human tissue leukocyte antigen) is the most important.

3. Infectious factors: According to research over the years, a variety of infectious factors, antigens or superantigens produced by microorganisms can directly or indirectly stimulate or initiate immune responses.

4. Endocrine factors: Studies have shown that the imbalance of estrogen and progesterone is related to the occurrence of various rheumatic diseases.

5. Environmental and physical factors: ultraviolet rays can induce SLE.

6. Others: Some drugs such as procainamide and some oral contraceptives can induce SLE and ANCA-positive vasculitis.

So, after learning so much from the article above, I believe many people should now know the causes of rheumatism. Through careful reading of the above, we will find that there are many causes of rheumatism, generally manifested as: immune factors, genetic factors, infection, environmental influences, etc. Knowing the causes of rheumatism is also beneficial to the treatment of patients.