Understanding Rheumatoid Arthritis: Symptoms and Causes

Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disorder that can affect more than just your joints. In some people, the condition can damage a wide variety of body systems, including the skin, eyes, lungs, heart, and blood vessels. An autoimmune disorder, rheumatoid arthritis occurs when your immune system mistakenly attacks your own body’s tissues.

Overview: Osteoarthritis vs. rheumatoid arthritis. Enlarge image. Arthritis is the swelling and tenderness of one or more joints. The main symptoms of arthritis are joint pain and stiffness, which typically worsen with age. The most common types of arthritis are osteoarthritis and osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.

Rheumatoid arthritis, or RA, is an autoimmune and inflammatory disease, which means that your immune system attacks healthy cells in your body by mistake, causing inflammation (painful swelling) in the affected parts of the body. RA mainly attacks the joints, usually many joints at once. RA commonly affects joints in the hands, wrists, and knees.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) causes joint inflammation and pain. It happens when the immune system doesn’t work properly and attacks the lining of the joints, called the synovium. The disease commonly affects the hands, knees, or ankles, and usually the same joint on both sides of the body, such as both hands or both knees.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a long-term (chronic) disease that causes inflammation of the joints. The inflammation can be so severe that it affects how the joints and other parts of the body look and function. In the hand, RA may cause deformities in the joints of the fingers. This makes moving your hands difficult.

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease that can cause joint pain, inflammation, and damage throughout your body. The joint damage that RA causes usually happens on both sides of the body. More information can be found at Mayo Clinic, CDC, Arthritis Foundation, Johns Hopkins Medicine, and Healthline.