Читать книгу Arthritis For Dummies - Barry Fox - Страница 92

Arthritis is bad for everyone, but it seems worse when it strikes children. Juvenile idiopathic arthritis or JIA (formerly called juvenile rheumatoid arthritis or JRA) is a broad term for childhood arthritis diseases that appear before the age of 17 and are characterized by joint inflammation that lasts more than six weeks. Nearly 300,000 children in the U.S. are affected by arthritis or other rheumatic conditions; more children than are currently affected by cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and muscular dystrophy combined.

The word “idiopathic” means the disease has no known cause. JIA is an autoimmune disease that causes the body to turn on itself and destroy its own joint tissue. It can cause pain and stiffness that comes and goes and changes from morning to afternoon or day to day. When the symptoms worsen, it’s called a flare or flare-up. Sometimes JIA goes away on its own for a short or long period of time, or even forever; these periods of time are called remission. Fortunately, many teens eventually experience full remission and end up with little to no joint damage.