Arthritis is a general term for approximately 100 diseases that produce either INFLAMMATION of connective tissues, particularly in joints, or noninflammatory degeneration of these tissues. The word means "joint inflammation," but because other structures are also affected, the diseases are often called connective tissue diseases. The terms rheumatism and rheumatic diseases are also used. Besides conditions so named, the diseases include gout, lupus erythematosus, ankylosing spondylitis, degenerative joint disease, and many others, among them the more recently identified LYME DISEASE.
Causes of these disorders include immune-system reactions and the wear and tear of aging, while research indicates that the nervous system may often be equally involved. About one out of seven Americans exhibit some form of arthritis. INFLAMMATORY CONNECTIVE TISSUE DISEASES This varied group of diseases produces inflammation in the connective tissues, particularly in the joints. The signs of inflammation--warmth, redness, swelling, and pain--may be apparent. Microscopic examination of the lesions reveals prominent blood vessels, abnormal accumulations of white blood cells, and varying degrees of wound healing with scarring.
In some diseases, the inflammation is clearly an immune reaction, the body's defense against invading microorganisms. In others, the cause is different or unknown. Infectious Arthritis This disease is most common in young adults. Infection in a joint is usually caused by bacteria or other microorganisms that invade the joint from its blood vessels.
Within hours or a few days the joint, usually the knee or elbow, becomes inflamed. There is an abnormal accumulation of synovial, or joint, fluid, which may be cloudy and contain large numbers of white blood cells. Gonococcal arthritis, a complication of gonorrhea, is the most common form of infectious arthritis. Treatment with antibiotics and aspiration of synovial fluid is usually promptly effective, and only minor residual damage is done to the joint. Occasionally the infection is prolonged and produces joint destruction and requires surgery. Rheumatic Fever This is a form of infectious arthritis caused by hemolytic streptococcus, a bacterium.
Unlike typical infectious arthritis, however, the disease is most common in children aged 5 to 15 years, begins weeks after the onset of the streptococc...
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... certain adrenal cortical steroids are powerful inhibitors of inflammation, toxic side effects limit their usefulness. Similarly, drugs that inhibit proliferation of cells in the inflammatory masses have potentially severe side effects. Drugs that inhibit undesirable inflammation may also inhibit desired inflammatory responses.
A result is a high frequency of secondary infections. More specific therapy, for example, allopurinol and colchicine in gout, is dependent on knowledge of the precise biochemical mechanisms of disease pathogenesis. Researchers are also studying the use of drugs that act on the nervous system. Despite the wear-and-tear origin of degenerative joint disease, it, too, may respond well to so-called anti-inflammatory drugs. Perhaps they are primarily acting as analgesics (pain-killers), or they may act by decreasing the secondary inflammation that follows joint trauma. Franklin Mullinax
Bibliography: Arthritis Foundation, Understanding Arthritis (1986); Kelley, William N., et al., eds., Textbook of Rheumatology, 2d ed., (1985); McCarty, Daniel F., ed., Arthritis and Allied Conditions, 11th ed. (1988); Moll, J. M. H., Rheumatology in Clinical Practice (1987).
Lupus is inflammatory disease caused when the immune system attacks its own tissues and organs, and this inflammation affects many different body parts such as the joints, skin, kidneys, blood cells, brain, heart and lungs. Second is the Celiac disease and it is an autoimmune reaction from eating gluten, and it may lead to damage in the small intestine because this disease attacks the villi, the projections that line the small intestine for protection. The last example is Rheumatoid Arthritis, an inflammatory disorder in which affects many joints, mainly in hands and feet, and then causing your joints to painfully swell and possibly cause bone erosion.
Researchers think that this immune system response may be triggered by bacteria or viruses, material in the intestinal contents, or a defective signal from the body’s own cells, called an autoimmune response. Inflammation results in pain, heat, redness, and swelling of the tissue. Chronic inflammation can harm the function of tissues and organs (U.S. News, 2009). Crohn’s disease also appears to affect certain ethnic groups more than others. American Jews of European descent are four to five times more likely to de... ...
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic inflammatory and an autoimmune disease that occurs when the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s tissue (Rheumatoid arthritis, 2017). This disease affects the entire body, which is called a systemic (means entire body) disease. Arthritis is derived from the word part arthr-, which means “joint,” and -itis, which means “inflammation,” so altogether it means “inflammation of the joints.” It creates inflammation that causes the tissue that lines the inside of joints (synovium) to thicken. About 1.5 million people in the U.S. are affected. It affects all races, but it affects three times as many women than men (What is Rheumatoid Arthritis, n.d.). Overtime, rheumatoid arthritis causes painful swelling that can potentially result in bone erosion or joint deformity, which leads up to physical disabilities. RA can affect more than just your joints, but can spread to body systems, skin, eyes, lungs, heart, blood vessels, e.t.c (Rheumatoid arthritis, 2017).
Corticosteroids (9) are wonderful-terrible-wonderful drugs. They make you crazy. (I was in psychotherapy.) They increase your appetite and increase your weight. (I was always hungry.) They put your nervous system on high alert. (I was nervous and frightened, my hands were shaky, and one eyelid twitched.) They produce edema. (My face and ankles swelled.) They cause insomnia, (I stayed up most of the night watching old movies on television.) Moreover, they give you the "gift" of boundless energy.
Ytterberg, S.R., Mahowald, M.L. & Krug, H.E.(1994) “Exercise for arthritis”, BailliOre' s Clinical Rheumatology, 8(1), pp. 161-189. ScienceDirect [Online]. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0950357905802304 (Accessed: 13th May 2014).
As mentioned earlier, immune system attack on the joints is one of the major psoriatic arthritis causes. It causes overproduction of the skin cells resulting to reddening and inflammation at both the joints and the skin. There is no clear reason why the immune system would turn against the joints. However, research on the disease shows that it is genetic since it has been found to affect those people who have a family history of the condition. Some other causes may be environmental factors such as viral or bacterial infection and trauma.
It is still unknown what the cause of Rheumatoid Arthritis is but there are some theories that have not been proven. The oldest theory states that viruses and bacteria are the cause of Rheumatoid Arthritis. Now with all the research being done, scientists believe that Rheumatoid Arthritis is hereditary. Specific genes have been found to make people more likely to get Rheumatoid Arthritis. Some scientists also think that some environmental factors and infections might cause the immune system to attack. Contributing factors are smoking and being exposed to silica metal. So although the exact causes are unknown, the result is that the immune system is ready to make the joins and tissues inflamed by activating immune cells.
Although steroids have many negative effects, they have many needed medical purposes. Androgens have many legitimate medical uses, such as the use for treatment of hypogonadal men to compensate for the lack of endogenous production. Anabolic steroids are also helpful for the treatment of certain adolescent diseases, some types of anemias, and for a relatively rare form of edema. Other clinical uses focus on the tissue building and anti-catabolic effects, such as in the treatment of burn victims, AIDS, or HIV positive patients, or patients malnourished from disease or old age (Bellino 1).
The truth is that steroids are prescribed by doctors to patients with many health problems. They key use for steroids is for the use of steroids is to replenish testosterone and develop muscle. Testosterone is the male hormone that aids sexual development and controls virilizing characteristics (Connolly 55). If steroids were bad, why would doctors prescribe them to patients? “They have been tested successfully as a male contraceptive, and they are used routinely to fight the wasting associated with HIV and AIDS” (Yesalis and Cowart 6). From the late 1930’s until the mid 1980’s anabolic steroids was used to treat mood and mental disorders because the drug increases mental alertness, mood elevation, improves memory, and concentration. Also anabolic steroids show similar brain activity to those with amphetamines and tricyclic anti depressants (58). Many people do not understand the use of the drug, how they work, or why people would want to use them, so therefore many people have false thoughts and judgments of the drug. “Steroids are misunderstood because most users abuse the drug, are not mentally prepared, do not live a healthy lifestyle while on the drug, or a person does not know anything about steroids other than that they are illegal o...
“Steroids are any type of a large group of fat-soluble organic compounds, as the sterols, bile acids, and sex hormones most of which have specific physiological action” (Dictionary.com). When our bodies are still developing, the effects of steroids can be dangerous and can also be permanent (“Above”). Steroids are made out of substances such as nandrolone, stanozolol, testosterone, fluoxymestrone, and oxandrolone. Sometimes people say when you can’t pronounce something, you probably shouldn’t use it. In the 1940’s testosterone began to be widely used in competitive sports, but the dangers of loading up on testosterone were not yet clear (“History”). Instead of using steroids for a bad reason, there is a medicinal purpose. Cortisteroids can treat arthritis, asthma, lupus and multiple sclerosis, eczema and rashes, and some types of cancer (“Steroids: Medline”). Also, steroids can be used to treat anemia, to improve weight loss due to severe illness, and to treat osteoporosis. Steroids can only be sold to you by a pharmacist f...
Steroids have been widely used and spread in the early 70‘s for many other reasons rather than medical purposes. Steroids can be classified to sex steroids, corticosteroids and anabolic steroids. They all three have been a used in the medical aid in different kind of dysfunction and illness. For example, I had a friend that had terrifying medical issues in the vertebral spinal lower back, she ended up having a disease because her spine was too weak and was not developing as it should have.
Steroids can have many health effects on your body. Many doctors say not to use steroids because of the possible long term effects. A source from a reputable website says, “It is speculated that possible long-term effects may include adverse cardiovascular ef...
Arthritis occurs when the body incorrectly identifies its own tissue as foreign matter and attacks it. Arthritis includes a set of more than eighty autoimmune diseases. Arthritis attacks connective tissues and joints. It causes stiffness, pain, inflammation, and swelling of the joints. Some kinds are crippling, but rarely leads to death. There are many different kinds of arthritis, the main ones being Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid arthritis; others include gout and ankylosing spodylitis.
Both climate change and global warming is one of the greatest environmental threats of our time, endangering our health, communities, the economy, and national security. These threats are responsible for rising seas, raging storms, increase of temperatures, aggressive fires, severe droughts, and floods from the effects of climate change and global warming. Climate change itself is the single biggest environmental and humanitarian crisis of our time. The Earth 's atmosphere is overloaded with heat-trapping carbon dioxide, which threatens large-scale disruptions in climate with devastating consequences. We must act now or the environment will only increasingly continue to be destroyed and will affect the lives of ourselves and the lives of our children 50 years from now.
According to Vultaggio (2015), Maya Angelou once said: “In the flush of love 's light, we dare be brave. And suddenly we see that love costs all we are, and will ever be. Yet it is only love which sets us free.” Dr. Rappleyea (2015) once stated that love is a very complex emotion perhaps the most complicated of all human emotions. Some might even add that love is not only an emotion but it is also an action shared between one or more individuals. Family greatly influences how we love and the way we show our love for one another. In fact we first learn what love is or what it is not in our household, and gradually our meaning of love will mature. Psychologist Robert Sternberg developed a triangular theory of love which explains the topic of