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What Causes Rheumatoid Arthritis? |
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Rheumatoid Arthritis is an autoimmune disease; this means
that your immune system attacks other parts of your body resulting to
redness, pain, swelling or a hot feeling in the lining of a joint, the place
where two or more bones come together. This redness, pain, swelling and heat
around the joint is called inflammation. The inflammation may also affect
other internal organs such as the eyes, lungs or heart, but the most common
places are the hands or feet.
The body’s immune system attacks healthy joints that cause inflammation in
the lining of the joints. This inflammation can be painful and can lead to
permanent damage if the disease is not treated and controlled. Joint damage
can occur even where the pain is not severe. Sometimes it may be too late to
fix the problem by the time X-rays discover them. Severe damage can lead to
permanent joint deformity or disability. In more stern cases, the pain and
the swelling may cause difficulty in walking and you may have trouble using
your hands for movement, such as dressing and cooking.
What causes rheumatoid arthritis?
What causes rheumatoid arthritis is still unknown, though much has been
learned about the process leading to this disease, researchers are yet to
discover what leads to these abnormal responses of the body’s immune system.
One established theory to what causes rheumatoid arthritis is that, a
combination of factors triggers this disease, including an abnormal
autoimmune response, genetic susceptibility, and some environmental or
biological trigger, such as viral infection or hormonal changes.
Abnormal Autoimmune Response
The inflammatory process is a result of the body’s immune system, which
fights infection and heals wounds and injuries; this is the normal immune
system response. When an injury or an infection take place, white blood
cells gather together to rid the body of any foreign proteins, such as
virus. The gathering of blood cells at the injured or infected area produce
factors to repair wounds, clot the blood, and fight any infective agents,
during this process the surrounding area becomes inflamed and some healthy
tissues are damaged. On normal conditions, the immune system has other
factors that control and limit this inflammatory process.
The primary infection-fighting elements are two types of white blood cells
called lymphocytes and leukocytes. Lymphocytes have two subtypes known as
T-cells and B-cells, both cells designed to recognize foreign invaders
(antigens) and to start an offensive and defensive action against them.
B-cells produce separate anti-bodies that can either ride along with B-cells
or travel on their own to attack the antigen. T-cells have special receptors
attached to their surface that recognize specific antigen. This type of cell
can be further categorized as killer T-cells and helper T-cells. Killer
T-cells directly attack antigens that occur in any cells that contain
nucleus while helper T-cells have two roles; they stimulate B-cells and
other white cells to attack the antigen and they also produce cytokines, a
powerful immune factor that has an important role in the inflammatory
process.
The action of the helper T-cells are of special awareness in what causes
rheumatoid arthritis. For some unknown reason, the T-cells become overactive
in rheumatoid arthritis mistaking the body’s own collagen as an antigen and
triggering a series of immune responses to destroy false enemy. The
leukocytes, another major white blood cell in the body, are also prompted
into action by the overwhelming T-cells; these leukocytes stimulate the
production of key players in the inflammatory process that in excessive
amounts becomes a damaging substance and may play a major destructive role
in rheumatoid arthritis.
Genetic Susceptibility
Genetic factors may play some role in what causes rheumatoid arthritis,
however studies suggest that it is not necessarily passed on from generation
to generation, although the presence of genes that influence the tendency of
rheumatoid arthritis may worsen the disease process. It should be pointed
out that defective genes not only can be inherited but not all who inherit
the gene will develop the disease, it may be mutated by environmental or
other factors. This theory needs more research to determine specific genetic
contributions as a factor that causes rheumatoid arthritis.
Environmental Triggers
Infections are being said to be an environmental trigger that causes
rheumatoid arthritis, although bacteria and viruses have been studied, no
single organism has been proven to be the primary trigger for the autoimmune
response and successive damaging inflammation.
A number of chemicals are being studied as triggers or causes of rheumatoid
arthritis like silica which was linked with rheumatoid arthritis in a 2003
study. Other chemicals are still under investigation but are still very
difficult to determine causal effects of any specific chemical. |
| This article
is provided courtesy of Roxanne Courtmanch. Please visit
www.thehelpingcircle.com for more articles on arthritis
as well as many other topics that may be of interest to you.
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