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What do you need to know about joint diseases?

It is unnecessary to say that arthritis is painful and ugly. These are pains, swelling, deformity, and eventually immobility. The trouble is that the disease is persistently young, and the danger creeps up unnoticed.

Joint diseases are divided by specialists into dystrophic and inflammatory. First, let's figure out how they differ from each other.

The names of dystrophic diseases usually have the ending "oz" – osteoarthritis, osteochondrosis. With arthrosis, the tissues of the joint gradually degenerate, this process is accompanied by pain, limited mobility, joint deformation, and crunching during movement. Hereditary predisposition plays an important role in the development of these diseases.

The names of inflammatory diseases usually have the ending "is" – arthritis, spondyloarthritis, polyarthritis, etc. This group includes Bekhterev's disease. It is characterized by hot and red skin over a swollen joint, morning stiffness, limited mobility, and joint deformity. Inflammatory joint diseases are caused by autoimmune, infectious, and infectious-allergic causes, as well as metabolic disorders (salt crystals form in the joint cavity).

About one in every hundredth person has arthritis. The disease can affect people of all ages, but especially middle-aged and elderly women. Eighty percent of people over the age of 65 suffer from arthritis.

Risk factors for arthritis include:

Genetic: hereditary pathology of joints; female
Acquired: smoking, overweight, allergic diseases, joint injuries, professional and sports stress on joints.

Many people do not consult a doctor until they have limited mobility and severe joint pain, and they do it completely in vain. The latest medical advances make it possible to slow down the development of arthritis at an early stage. When symptoms such as pain in the spine or joint appear, it is necessary to understand that their damage (metabolic, inflammatory, or dystrophic) is constantly progressing. Arthritis is an insidious and unpredictable disease, so a joint prone to arthritis can irreversibly change its structure at any moment, which, in turn, can lead to disability.

In the later stages of arthritis, sometimes time-consuming cartilage replacement surgery, complete or partial joint replacement is required. Although joint replacement surgeries have been performed successfully for a long time, surgical treatment of arthritis is an extreme measure.

That is why any manifestations of arthritis require urgent medical intervention.

In order to correctly diagnose, the doctor should try to find out the cause of the disease, clarify which joints are affected, and how quickly the disease developed. After that, a laboratory examination will be scheduled, including: complete blood count, determination of specific markers in the blood characteristic of a particular arthritis, if necessary, examination by a urologist or gynecologist to exclude urogenital infection, it is mandatory to conduct X-ray analysis of the joints.

For the convenience of patients and doctors, specialists of OLYMP CDL have developed a diagnostic profile "Rheumatological", which includes more than 10 laboratory parameters that allow for accurate diagnosis of joint diseases.

The most important ones are listed below:

Complete blood count. It shows the level of hemoglobin (decreases with anemia), the number of white blood cells (fighting infection), and platelets (play a role in the blood clotting process). Autoimmune diseases can cause various deviations in the complete blood count. Some drugs used in rheumatology can also cause deviations in parameters.
Rheumatoid factor (RF) is a special type of antibody, most often found in rheumatoid arthritis. It is very important for the diagnosis and prognosis of the course of the disease. However, rheumatoid factor can occur in other autoimmune diseases and even in healthy people. On the other hand, about a third of patients with rheumatoid arthritis do not have rheumatoid factor, therefore, the results of the rheumatoid factor test are always taken into account in combination with the results of other tests and with the clinical picture.
Uric acid is a product of protein breakdown and is excreted in the urine. When the concentration of uric acid in the body increases, it precipitates in the form of crystals. Crystals are deposited in tissues and cause inflammation. Measuring the level of uric acid in the blood is used when gout is suspected and to assess the effectiveness of its treatment.
Complement levels of C3 and C4 (reflect the degree of inflammation in lupus).
The level of immunoglobulins A, M, G – characterize the state of the immune system.
C-reactive protein is an acute phase protein, the most sensitive and fastest indicator of joint tissue damage in inflammation, necrosis, and trauma.
Antistreptolysin-O is a marker of the presence of streptococcal infection in the body. It is a laboratory criterion for rheumatism.