Understanding Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid Arthritis is a multifactor disease involving multiple joints giving rise to pain, swelling in and around the affected joint, redness and increase in the local temperature.

The exact cause of rheumatoid arthritis is not known. Earlier, it was suspected that some infective agents like bacteria, virus and fungi have a predisposing role towards occurrence of rheumatoid arthritis in some genetically susceptible host, but it was not proved as the exclusive cause.

Infective hypothesis- Due to the global distribution of the disease, an assumption was made that infection may have a significant role, but the precise causative organism must be omnipresent. A number of probable causative agents are under supervision.

These are Epstein – Barr virus (EBV), Mycoplasma, Rubella virus, Cytomegalovirus and Parvovirus. Still no conclusive proof has been established. The hypothesis of an infective agent causing chronic severe inflammatory reaction around joint also remains under controversy.

The one probable cause may be the persistent infection of the articular cartilage and its surrounding structures or retention of the remnants of the infectious agent inside the synovial tissue that produces the chronic inflammatory reaction.

Few scientists have found out that the patients having rheumatoid arthritis had suffered from the infection with Proteus mirabilis at some part of their lifetime.

Genetic factors- Another hypothesis of rheumatoid arthritis is that it is genetic in origin. It was found that monozygotic twins have four fold increased chance of getting the active process of the disease than the dizygotic twins who possess similar chance developing the disease.

It was also noted that the first degree relatives of the patients suffering from severe rheumatoid arthritis [http://www.arthritissymptoms.org/rhematoid-arthritis.htm] have a four times increased risk of acquiring the disease, which is having the autoantibody- the Rheumatic factor. Highest risk of association of the disease is seen among the twins who possess two HLA-DRB 1 alleles known to be related with rheumatoid arthritis.

Class-II major histocompatibility complex gene HLA-DR 4 (DR