Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disorder in which humoral and cell-mediated immunity are misregulated, leading to the development of anti-rheumatoid factor antibodies that attack the joints of the human body. It is a chronic, progressive, inflammatory arthritis affecting millions of people across the world. Like any other autoimmune disorder, in rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system mistakenly attacks and destroys health. However, the exact causes of rheumatoid arthritis are still a grey area to be explored.
How Rheumatoid arthritis impacts life?
RA typically affects the lining of joints, causing severe swelling or inflammation that leads to bone erosion, destruction of synovial joints, and joint structural changes. Since rheumatoid arthritis is a bone disorder, the patients find it challenging to carry out daily activities like walking, sitting, standing, running, etc.
More often, women and those with a history of rheumatoid arthritis in their families are more prone to inherit it. If the disease symptoms are not treated adequately, acute rheumatoid arthritis can quickly progress to chronic rheumatoid arthritis, leading to severe disability, aging, and premature mortality. Moreover, rheumatoid arthritis can harm one's physical, social, and emotional well-being of the affected individual.
Signs and Symptoms of Rheumatoid arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic slow progressive bone disorder. The patient experiences very early symptoms such as general malaise, exhaustion, low-grade fever, anorexia, and non-specific musculoskeletal pain.
Upon disease progression, the patients complain of the disease's articular symptoms, including joint pain, stiffness, edema, warmth, and tenderness that is worse in the morning affecting peripheral joints, primarily the hands, feet, legs, knees, and elbows.
Moreover, being a systemic autoimmune disorder, RA can also affect other body organs causing rheumatoid nodule, vasculitis, pleural effusion, pulmonary fibrosis, cardiac issues, and ocular manifestations.
Rheumatoid arthritis Treatment:
Rheumatoid arthritis has no permanent cure. However, permanent damage to the joint can be greatly prevented by timely diagnosis and the quick start of specific treatment with disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDS) to control the progression of the illness and reduce the severity of arthritic pain. Also, biological agents, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), and low-dose corticosteroids are widely used to treat the condition.
Get Rheumatoid arthritis samples online.
Helping arthritis researchers across the globe fulfil their research dreams, Central BioHub offers a systematic collection of rheumatoid arthritis biospecimens. As the most trusted human biospecimen provider, Central BioHub provides unrivaled access to high-quality human biospecimens such as serum and plasma samples collected from people of all ages, gender and ethnicities. The samples are typically measured for common biomarkers of arthritis, such as anti-rheumatoid factor (RF), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), C-reactive protein (CRP), and anti-citrullinated protein/peptide antibodies (ACPA/anti-CCP). To know more about the samples, browse their inventory here: https://centralbiohub.de/biospecimens/autoimmune-diseases/rheumatoid-arthritis
