Arthritis can be a crippling, painful condition that affects the cartilage that covers the joint surfaces at the ends of the bones. Smooth hyaline cartilage surfaces erode and ultimately expose underlying bone, causing pain, inflammation and, in the more severe stages, loss of mobility.
Arthritis can be caused by several factors, but the end result is pain, swelling, inflammation and varying degrees of mobility deficits.
Obesity
Obesity can have a profound effect upon the joints, especially the weight-bearing ones of the lower extremities: the hips, knees and ankles. According to the 2005-2006 results of the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, over 32 percent of the U.S. population over age 20 is overweight, over 1/3 are obese and almost 6 percent are considered severely obese.
Extreme increases in weight place abnormally high pressure on the cartilage surfaces of weight-bearing joints, accelerating their wear and tear. Arthritis can develop earlier and more severely in morbidly obese people, and in many cases, the state of obesity can create potential health complications when considering treatment options, such as diabetes, cardiovascular problems, poor circulation and hypertension.
Trauma
Post-traumatic arthritis can develop in joints that have been injured or damaged as a result of some level of trauma inflicted on the body. Motor vehicle accidents with associated dashboard injuries are frequent causes, as are histories of contact sports injuries at a high competitive level. Other causes of trauma can penetrating wounds as seen in gunshot injuries and fractures where the joint itself is involved, creating uneven joint cartilage surfaces that wear irregularly and more rapidly than normal. Falls in the elderly population can also be frequent causative factors.
Infection
Arthritis that is caused by infection is called septic arthritis. When microorganisms congregate inside a joint, which is predominately an enclosed area, they proliferate rapidly. Many of these microorganisms produce a material called an exudate (pus), which is thick and can be produced rapidly in large amounts.
As exudate builds up in a joint, it begins to create pressure upon the internal structures of a joint, mainly the smooth cartilage joint surfaces. As this pressure increases, it begins to degrade and ultimately destroy these cartilage cells, robbing them of their nutrition from the normally present joint fluid.
As the destruction progresses, underlying bone surfaces can become exposed, causing pain and increasing the risk of infection developing in the bone itself. This results in osteomyelitis, an extremely difficult infection to treat.
Auto-Immune Diseases
Rheumatoid arthritis is an auto-immune disease. Auto-immune diseases are typically hereditary in nature and are characterized by stimulation of the body's defense mechanisms, causing it to attack itself. The normal joint lining, called the synovium, becomes abnormally inflamed and begins to invade into the joint itself, destroying the cartilage surfaces.
Rheumatoid arthritis can affect any joint in the body, as well as different organ systems. It is difficult to treat and frequently requires patients to be on long-term systemic steroids to treat the massive inflammation.
