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Arthritis

Definition of Arthritis

Arthritis is the inflammation of a joint, usually accompanied by pain, swelling, and stiffness, and resulting from infection, trauma, degenerative changes, metabolic disturbances, or other causes. It occurs in various forms, such as bacterial arthritis, osteoarthritis, or rheumatoid arthritis.

Clinicians Clash Over New Lyme Disease Guidelines Lyme disease can be a confusing ailment, with symptoms differing between patients -- and sometimes even within the same patient -- as the infection runs its course. That confusion now has spread to its treatment, with physicians locked in a fierce debate over how long the course of antibiotics needed to kill the infection should last. The Infectious Disease Society of America (IDSA) came up with new guidelines in November, stating that "95 percent of cases of Lyme disease are cured with 10 to 28 days of oral antibiotics." The guidelines also strongly object to the use of antibiotics in patients beyond 30 days, since long-term antibiotic treatment can cause drug resistance and create other medical risks. Read the Article
Clinical Trials Update: July 18, 2007 Addictions Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (Enlarged Prostate) Rheumatoid Arthritis Read the Article
Hip Protectors Won't Prevent Fractures in Elderly printer.The use of energy-absorbing hip protector pads won't prevent hip fractures, new research suggests. "We found that there was no benefit to the hip protector," said study author Dr. Douglas Kiel, director of medical research at the Institute for Aging Research at Hebrew SeniorLife and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston. The finding is reported in the June 25 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. "At this point, I would say that most of the growing number of studies don't support the routine use of hip protectors in nursing homes," said Kiel. "But I don't think the future of hip protectors is totally negative. Maybe there are better pads out there or will be in the future." Read the Article
Health Highlights: July 25, 2007 Presidential Panel Urges Better Care for Veterans Drug-Resistant Infections Spur Jump in Hospital Stays Groups Want Devices Labeled for Toxic Chemical Medicare Should End Wasteful Drug-Plan Practice: CU Medicaid Law Aimed at Illegal Immigrants Isn't Working: Report Bus Passengers May Have Been Exposed to TB Read the Article
Scleroderma: A Rare but Devastating Disease The skin thickens and tightens, becoming deformed and unyielding. Then, the skin around the body's joints allows for less and less bending. Hands, elbows and knees all become stiff. In worst cases, the hardening can reach into the internal organs, with potentially life-threatening results. The kidneys, lungs, heart, gastrointestinal tract and vascular system can become compromised, their normal processes hindered or halted as the organs grow rigid. The disease is called scleroderma, and no one is sure what causes it or how it can be cured. An estimated 200 to 300 people per million in the United States suffer from scleroderma, according to the American College of Rheumatology. Some 12 to 20 new cases per million are diagnosed annually. Scleroderma is believed to be an autoimmune disease, in which the immune system turns against one's own body. "Your body attacks itself," said Read the Article
Inflammatory Joint, Bowel Diseases May Be Linked People whose blood relatives have the joint disease ankylosing spondylitis (AS) are at increased risk not just for AS, but for inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) as well, an Icelandic study shows. Looking at data from six generations of Icelanders, the researchers discovered a familial link between IBD and AS, an inflammatory disease that primarily affects the spine. People with AS often suffer from chronic bowel disease and gastrointestinal distress, and both AS and IBD are known to run in families. However, prior to this study, no link had been identified between the two conditions. According to the researchers, Icelanders provide an ideal study population, because the environmental and lifestyle factors are the same throughout the country. Iceland also maintains an extensive genealogical registry, as well as a half century of records on both AS and IBD sufferers, providing a mine of data for researchers. Researchers at Landspitali Univer Read the Article
Diabetes Drug Should Stay Despite Heart Risks, U.S. Advisers Say The widely prescribed type 2 diabetes drug Avandia should remain on the market, despite studies that suggest it could increase the risk of heart attacks, U.S. health advisers said Monday. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted 22-1 to keep the drug on the market, although it recommended Avandia should carry new safety warnings. That vote was preceded by another vote, 20-3, in which panel members agreed that available data does show Avandia increases heart risks. "The committee felt, almost uniformly, that there is a risk to some patients," said Dr. Clifford Rosen, the acting committee chairman from the Maine Center for Osteoporosis, St. Joseph Hospital, in Bangor. "There was some increased risk of cardiac events to some patients. The signal for increased risk was there, with some qualifications," he told reporters at a teleconference. Patients at risk include those with congestive heart failure, heart disease or patien Read the Article
Age 100 No Bar to Hip Replacement Age alone should not rule out hip-replacement surgery in people over 100 years old, a new study suggests. A team at the University of Pittsburgh noted that nearly one out of two centenarians are still living independently, but they are also at the highest risk of fractures due to osteoporosis. However, there have been very few studies of the effectiveness of joint replacement surgeries in people over 90 years old. Read the Article
Medicare Patients Fare Better at Orthopedic Hospitals Compared to general hospitals, specialty orthopedic hospitals serve a healthier population of Medicare patients, a new study finds. "We suspected that specialty orthopedic hospitals were selecting low-risk patients for admission, and that is what our analysis found," lead author Dr. Peter Cram, assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa, said in a prepared statement. "But we also found that complications were less common in specialty hospitals even after accounting for the types of patients each hospital admitted -- this was quite surprising," Cram added. The findings are published in the August issue of the Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery. The researchers, from the University of Iowa and the Department of Veterans Affairs Iowa City Health Care System, found that Medicare patients who received hip or knee replacement at specialty orthopedic hospitals were about 40 percent less likely to suffer post-surgery compli Read the Article
Clinical Trials Update: Aug. 13, 2007 Osteoarthritis Asthma West Nile Virus Read the Article
Experimental MS Vaccine Proves Safe in Early Test An experimental DNA vaccine to fight multiple sclerosis is safe and may also be effective, results of a small Canadian trial suggest. The vaccine, called BHT-3009, works by preventing the immune system from attacking the myelin sheaths that protect nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. The destruction of myelin eventually destroys a nerve cell's axon, which prevents cells from transmitting messages and is one of the hallmarks of MS. "This was an early trial of a new class of drugs for autoimmune disease in general and for MS in particular," said lead researcher Dr. Amit Bar-Or, of McGill University's Montreal Neurological Institute. The idea of the vaccine is to change the immune cells that target the nervous system, Bar-Or said. "What we want to do is focus on just those cells that are involved in the disease process," he said. "So antigen-specific therapies are designed to try to modify or eliminate only those bad-guy cells that are in Read the Article
Direct-to-Consumer Drug Ads Booming Despite Criticisms Drug company spending on direct-to-consumer advertising continues to skyrocket, even as criticisms against it have soared. Calling for a moratorium, rather than just restrictions, on such advertising might be in order, say the authors of a study in the Aug. 16 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. "Direct-to-consumer advertising spending is increasing in terms of its share of total marketing budget, but it's still a smaller share relative to promotion aimed at influencing prescribers," said study author Julie M. Donohue, an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration started allowing direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs on television 10 years ago. Since that time, spots of Dorothy Hamill and Sally Field peddling Vioxx and Boniva, respectively, cartoon characters illustrating the effects of the antidepr Read the Article
Clinical Trials Update: Aug. 17, 2007 High Cholesterol Memory Loss Rheumatoid Arthritis Read the Article
Virus Could Help Drive Obesity New research is bolstering the theory that obesity may stem, a least in part, from a common virus -- one that helps create new, heftier fat cells. The roots of obesity are probably complex and various, the U.S. team stressed. However, their lab tests showed that exposure to adenovirus-36 (Ad-36), which causes respiratory and eye infections, also causes stem cells to develop into fat cells. This is the first time anyone has identified a viral "fattening effect" in humans, said lead researcher Dr. Magdalena Pasarica, an obesity researcher with the Pennington Biomedical Research Center at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The same team was also the first to have shown that Ad-36 is much more prevalent among obese people than among leaner men and women. In that earlier work, the virus was spotted among 30 percent of obese individuals compared with just 11 percent of non-obese people. In the new study, "we took this a step further, a Read the Article
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