Читать книгу Arthritis For Dummies - Barry Fox - Страница 12

So what exactly is arthritis, this disease that brings us so much misery and pain? Unfortunately, we can’t provide one easy answer to that question, because arthritis involves a group of diseases — each with its own cause, set of symptoms, and treatments. However, these diseases do have the following in common:

 They affect some part of the joint.

 They cause pain and (possibly) loss of movement.

 They often bring about some kind of inflammation.

As for the causes of these different kinds of arthritis, they run the gamut from inheriting an unlucky gene to physical trauma to getting bitten by the wrong mosquito.

The word arthritis, which literally means joint inflammation, comes from the Greek words arthros (joint) and itis (inflammation), and its major symptom is joint pain. Although the same group of ailments can be called rheumatism, it’s usually referred to as arthritis, so that’s what we call it in this book. The word arthralgia, a term used much less frequently, refers to joint pain alone. According to the CDC, arthritis affects some 58.5 million American adults (one out of every four people) and 300,000 children. That’s a big chunk of the population. For a look at how many people are affected by some of the most common forms of arthritis, see “Arthritis by the Numbers” later in the chapter.