It is not yet clear exactly how rheumatoid arthritis develops and why some people are affected and others remain healthy. A certain susceptibility seems to lie in the genes, which is why the risk of contracting the disease is higher in direct relatives of sufferers than in healthy individuals. External factors also appear to contribute to disease development, such as air pollution and other environmental pollutants. Smokers, who are exposed to the highest “air pollution”, have a significantly increased risk of disease and fall ill more severely.
Better understood than the genesis is the actual disease process. It is an “auto-immune” disease, which means that the body’s defense system mistakenly turns against the body’s own tissues. In rheumatoid arthritis against the inner skin of the joints -the so-called “synovium”, which leads to short-term inflammation and long-term destruction of the joints, if the disease is not detected and treated in time.
Inflammation of the joints often causes them to swell painfully. It is also typical that the joints are less mobile, especially if they have rested for a long time. This symptom is called “morning stiffness.” This also distinguishes rheumatism from wear and tear of the joints, so-called arthrosis, since here the joints tend to cause increasing discomfort in the course of the day and not in the morning after getting up.
In addition to the symptoms at the joint, however, there are several other symptoms, all of which can also occur in other diseases, which sometimes complicates the diagnosis. Typical symptoms include fatigue and tiredness, increased temperature and fever, night sweats, and unwanted weight loss. Targeted blood tests may also indicate rheumatoid inflammation. Due to this variety of symptoms, the diagnosis sometimes resembles a jigsaw puzzle of individual findings, which should definitely be made by an experienced physician.
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