Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a long-term autoimmune disorder that primarily affects joints. It typically results in warm, swollen, and painful joints. Pain and stiffness often worsen following rest. Most commonly, the wrist and hands are involved, with the same joints typically involved on both sides of the body. The disease may also affect other parts of the body, including skin, eyes, lungs, heart, nerves and blood. This may result in a low red blood cell count, inflammation around the lungs, and inflammation around the heart. Fever and low energy may also be present. Often, symptoms come on gradually over weeks to months.
Autoimmunity is the system of immune responses of an organism against its own healthy cells, tissues and other body normal constituents. Any disease resulting from this type of immune response is termed an "autoimmune disease". Prominent examples include celiac disease, post-infectious IBS, diabetes mellitus type 1, Henloch Scholein Pupura (HSP) sarcoidosis, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Sjögren syndrome, eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis, Hashimoto's thyroiditis, Graves' disease, idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura, Addison's disease, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), ankylosing spondylitis, polymyositis (PM), dermatomyositis (DM) and multiple sclerosis (MS). Autoimmune diseases are very often treated with steroids.
Rheumatology is a branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis and therapy of rheumatic diseases. Physicians who have undergone formal training in rheumatology are called rheumatologists. Rheumatologists deal mainly with immune-mediated disorders of the musculoskeletal system, soft tissues, autoimmune diseases, vasculitides, and inherited connective tissue disorders.
Ankylosing spondylitis (AS) is a type of arthritis in which there is a long-term inflammation of the joints of the spine. Typically the joints where the spine joins the pelvis are also affected. Occasionally other joints such as the shoulders or hips are involved. Eye and bowel problems may also occur. Back pain is a characteristic symptom of AS, and it often comes and goes. Stiffness of the affected joints generally worsens over time.
The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) is one of the institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health, an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Rheumatism or rheumatic disorders are conditions causing chronic, often intermittent pain affecting the joints or connective tissue. Rheumatism does not designate any specific disorder, but covers at least 200 different conditions, including arthritis and "non-articular rheumatism", also known as "regional pain syndrome" or "soft tissue rheumatism". There is a close overlap between the term soft tissue disorder and rheumatism. Sometimes the term "soft tissue rheumatic disorders" is used to describe these conditions.
Synovial fluid, also called synovia,[help 1] is a viscous, non-Newtonian fluid found in the cavities of synovial joints. With its egg white–like consistency, the principal role of synovial fluid is to reduce friction between the articular cartilage of synovial joints during movement. Synovial fluid is a small component of the transcellular fluid component of extracellular fluid.
An arthropathy is a disease of a joint.
Inflammatory arthritis is a group of diseases which includes: rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthropathy, inflammatory bowel disease, adult-onset Still's disease, scleroderma, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).
Mixed connective tissue disease commonly abbreviated as MCTD, is an autoimmune disease characterized by the presence of elevated blood levels of a specific autoantibody, now called anti-U1 ribonucleoprotein (RNP) together with a mix of symptoms of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), scleroderma, and polymyositis. The idea behind the "mixed" disease is that this specific autoantibody is also present in other autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus, polymyositis, scleroderma, etc. MCTD was characterized as an individual disease in 1972 by Sharp et al., and the term was introduced by Leroy in 1980.
Palindromic rheumatism (PR) is a syndrome characterised by recurrent, self-resolving inflammatory attacks in and around the joints, consists of arthritis or periarticular soft tissue inflammation. The course is often acute onset, with sudden and rapidly developing attacks or flares. There is pain, redness, swelling, and disability of one or multiple joints. The interval between recurrent palindromic attacks and the length of an attack is extremely variable from few hours to days. Attacks may become more frequent with time but there is no joint damage after attacks. It is thought to be an autoimmune disease, possibly an abortive form of rheumatoid arthritis.
Lupus erythematosus is a collection of autoimmune diseases in which the human immune system becomes hyperactive and attacks healthy tissues. Symptoms of these diseases can affect many different body systems, including joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, heart, and lungs. The most common and most severe form is systemic lupus erythematosus.
Arthritis mutilans is a rare medical condition involving severe inflammation damaging the joints of the hands and feet, and resulting in deformation and problems with moving the affected areas; it can also affect the spine. As an uncommon arthropathy, arthritis mutilans was originally described as affecting the hands, feet, fingers, and/or toes, but can refer in general to severe derangement of any joint damaged by arthropathy. First described in modern medical literature by Marie and Leri in 1913, in the hands, arthritis mutilans is also known as opera glass hand, or chronic absorptive arthritis. Sometimes there is foot involvement in which toes shorten and on which painful calluses develop in a condition known as opera glass foot, or pied en lorgnette.
Michael D. Lockshin is an American professor and medical researcher. He is a researcher of autoimmune diseases, with focus on antiphospholipid syndrome and lupus. He is currently professor of medicine and obstetrics-gynecology at the Weill-Cornell University Medical College in New York City. In addition, he is director of the Barbara Volcker Center for Women and Rheumatic Disease and co-director of the Mary Kirkland Center for Lupus Research, both at the Hospital for Special Surgery
Lupus, technically known as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), is an autoimmune disease in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue in many parts of the body. Symptoms vary between people and may be mild to severe. Common symptoms include painful and swollen joints, fever, chest pain, hair loss, mouth ulcers, swollen lymph nodes, feeling tired, and a red rash which is most commonly on the face. Often there are periods of illness, called flares, and periods of remission during which there are few symptoms.
Lupus headache is a proposed, specific headache disorder in patients suffering from systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Research shows that headache is a symptom commonly described by SLE patients —57% in one meta-analysis, ranging in different studies from 33% to 78%; of which migraine 31.7% and tension-type headache 23.5%. The existence of a special lupus headache is contested, although few high-quality studies are available to form definitive conclusions.
Pamela J. Russell is an Australian is an academic researcher of immunology, bladder and prostate research. Russell was awarded Membership of the Order of Australia (AM) for her research on prostate and bladder cancer in 2003.
Interleukin-38 (IL-38) is a member of the interleukin-1 (IL-1) family and the interleukin-36 (IL-36) subfamily. It is important for the inflammation and host defense. This cytokine is named IL-1F10 in humans and has similar three dimensional structure as IL-1 receptor antagonist (IL-1Ra). The organisation of IL-1F10 gene is conserved with other members of IL-1 family within chromosome 2q13. IL-38 is produced by mammalian cells may bind the IL-1 receptor type I. It is expressed in basal epithelia of skin, in proliferating B cells of the tonsil, in spleen and other tissues. This cytokine is playing important role in regulation of innate and adaptive immunity.
Neuropsychiatric systemic lupus erythematosus or NPSLE refers to the neurological and psychiatric manifestations of systemic lupus erythematosus. SLE is a disease in which the immune system attacks the body's own cells and tissues. It can affect various organs or systems of the body. It is estimated that over half of people with SLE have neuropsychiatric involvement.
Axial spondyloarthritis is a chronic, autoinflammatory disease predominantly affecting the axial skeleton. The most known member of the axial spondyloarthritis disease family is ankylosing spondylitis. Axial spondyloarthritis is an umbrella term that was introduced in 2009 to characterize a diverse disease family that share clinical and genetic features, such as the involvement of the axial skeleton. The expression was introduced in order to unify (1) less severe forms of spondylitis, (2) the early phase of ankylosing spondylitis as well as (3) ankylosing spondylitis itself into one term.
