40 Fun Facts About Rheumatoid Arthritis

Salts of which precious metal were injected into muscle for decades to slow the joint damage of rheumatoid arthritis?

Gold salts, a treatment known as chrysotherapy, fell from favor because of their side effects. In rare cases long courses leave the skin permanently slate gray.

Which French Impressionist painted through the last twenty years of his life despite severe rheumatoid arthritis?

Renoir did not paint with a brush strapped to his fingers, as legend has it. He could still grip one, though an assistant had to set it in place.

Which habit, acting together with certain genes, is the best-defined environmental risk for rheumatoid arthritis?

Smoking tobacco raises the risk most in men, in heavy users and in people who test positive for the disease's telltale blood antibodies.

Which bird names the finger deformity of rheumatoid arthritis in which one joint arches back and the tip curls down?

Swan neck deformity curls the fingertip toward the palm while the joint below it bends back. The thumb has too few joints for it, so its version is called duck bill deformity.

During which stage of life do most women with rheumatoid arthritis find that their symptoms temporarily ease?

Pregnancy eases symptoms for a majority of women with the disease, but the relief rarely lasts. Flares are common in the months after delivery.

Rheumatoid arthritis ended the career of which surgeon, who performed the first human-to-human heart transplant?

Christiaan Barnard retired as head of cardiac surgery in Cape Town in 1983, sixteen years after the 1967 operation that made him world famous.

Which injectable drug's brand name is short for human monoclonal antibody in rheumatoid arthritis?

Humira, known generically as adalimumab, had the largest sales of any drug in the world in 2019 and 2020, at around $20 billion a year.

Rheumatoid arthritis, like lupus and type 1 diabetes, belongs to which broad class of disorders?

Autoimmune diseases arise when the immune system attacks the body's own healthy tissue. In this case its main target is the lining of the joints.

The joint stiffness of rheumatoid arthritis, which eases with movement, is usually worst at which time of day?

Early morning stiffness can last for several hours before movement loosens the joints. It follows an overnight rise in inflammatory signals such as interleukin-6.

Which actress, the voice of Jessica Rabbit, kept her rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis quiet during the 1990s?

Kathleen Turner's medication changed her appearance, which set off tabloid speculation about drinking. She let the rumor stand, believing it was worse for people to know about the illness.

Which joint disease, caused by the breakdown of cartilage, is far more common than rheumatoid arthritis?

Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis worldwide. Unlike rheumatoid joints, the ones it wears down do not turn hot or red.

Rheumatoid arthritis usually starts in which joints, typically on both sides of the body at once?

Hands and feet are usually struck first, in the small joints at the knuckles and the base of the toes. Larger joints tend to follow later.

Ibuprofen and naproxen, which ease rheumatoid arthritis pain without slowing the disease, belong to which drug class?

NSAIDs, short for nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, reduce pain and stiffness but do nothing to the long-term course, so they are no longer a first-line treatment.

Which steroid hormone, known in the lab as Compound E, was first given to rheumatoid arthritis patients in 1948?

Cortisone earned Philip Hench, Edward Kendall and Tadeus Reichstein the 1950 Nobel Prize in Medicine, just two years after the first patient trials.

The JAK enzymes blocked by rheumatoid arthritis pills such as tofacitinib are named after which Roman god?

Janus, the two-faced god of beginnings and endings, fit because each enzyme has two near-identical working domains. The initials first stood for 'just another kinase'.

Swelling around the wrist in rheumatoid arthritis can squeeze the median nerve, causing which common condition?

Carpal tunnel syndrome is the most common nerve problem in the disease. It brings numbness and tingling to the thumb and the fingers beside it.

Rheumatoid arthritis and long-term steroid treatment both raise the risk of which condition behind many broken hips?

Osteoporosis first appears in the bone around inflamed joints. Immobility, inflammatory signals and corticosteroid treatment then spread the thinning through the skeleton.

In which city did Augustin Jacob Landré-Beauvais write the first recognized description of rheumatoid arthritis in 1800?

Paris was home to the famed Salpêtrière Hospital, where the young doctor worked. He wrongly took the disease for a form of gout.

Which Danish tennis player, a former world No. 1, revealed in 2018 that she had rheumatoid arthritis?

Caroline Wozniacki made the announcement months after winning the Australian Open, her only major title. She said she wanted to be a role model for people with the condition.

Which thin membrane, lining the inside of joint capsules, is the main target of rheumatoid arthritis?

Synovium has an inner layer thinner than a sheet of paper. In this disease it swells and thickens, and the cartilage and bone beneath begin to break down.

Which drug, originally a cancer chemotherapy, is usually the first treatment prescribed for rheumatoid arthritis?

Methotrexate is taken weekly rather than daily to limit its toxicity. The doses used for joints are far lower than those given to cancer patients.

What term describes rheumatoid arthritis in the one-third of patients whose blood shows no telltale antibodies?

Seronegative disease tests negative for rheumatoid factor and its sister marker, so a clean blood result never rules the diagnosis out.

Which rheumatoid arthritis drug, sold as Plaquenil, belongs to a family of medicines developed to fight malaria?

Hydroxychloroquine, approved in the United States in 1955, is also considered the first-line treatment for lupus.

What are the firm lumps called that form under the skin, often at the elbow, in some people with rheumatoid arthritis?

Nodules are the most common feature of the disease outside the joints. They favor bony points under repeated pressure, such as elbows, heels and knuckles.

Which condition, marked by dry eyes and a dry mouth, often develops alongside rheumatoid arthritis?

Sjögren's disease arises when immune cells infiltrate the glands that make tears and saliva. Severe dryness of the eye is painful and can threaten vision.

Chronic inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis traps iron in the body's stores, causing which common blood condition?

Anemia is by far the most common blood abnormality in the disease. Inflammation raises a hormone called hepcidin, which blocks iron absorption and locks iron away in immune cells.

Before starting certain biologic drugs for rheumatoid arthritis, patients are screened for which latent lung infection?

Tuberculosis can lie dormant in the body, and drugs that block a key immune signal can let it reactivate, so doctors test for it first.

Which vitamin is commonly prescribed with the main rheumatoid arthritis drug to cut nausea and other side effects?

Folic acid offsets the way the drug works, which is by blocking the body's use of that same vitamin.

Rheumatoid arthritis has been consistently linked with bacterial disease of which part of the mouth?

Gums infected by certain bacteria may help set off the illness. The microbes alter proteins there, a change suspected of provoking the antibodies that later attack joints.

Prompt drug treatment brings about half of rheumatoid arthritis patients into which state, the main goal of care?

Remission is the realistic aim because there is no cure. The signs of active inflammation fade, but stopping the medicines can bring them back.

Which English physician, who traced gout to a substance in the blood, coined the term rheumatoid arthritis in 1859?

Alfred Garrod was also the first to propose lithium as a remedy for gout, and he recommended it for mental illness too.

What is the abnormal tissue called that spreads over a joint in rheumatoid arthritis, eroding cartilage and bone?

Pannus can grow almost like a tumor, releasing enzymes that dissolve collagen. The same word describes blood vessels creeping across the cornea of the eye.

Felty's syndrome is a triad of rheumatoid arthritis, a low white blood cell count and enlargement of which organ?

Spleen enlargement gives the rare syndrome its third sign. The shortage of infection-fighting neutrophils leaves patients prone to repeated infections.

Caplan's syndrome, a lung condition tied to rheumatoid arthritis, was first described among workers in which industry?

Coal mining supplied the cases: Anthony Caplan sat on a Cardiff panel assessing dust-damaged lungs and described the pattern in 1953.

Which blood test for rheumatoid arthritis looks for antibodies against proteins altered to contain citrulline?

Anti-CCP stands for anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide. The test can confirm the disease in its first stages, before joints are destroyed.

Rituximab, a lymphoma drug also used for rheumatoid arthritis, works by depleting which type of white blood cell?

B cells carry a surface protein called CD20, which the drug locks onto. The plasma cells that pump out antibodies lack it and are spared.

Infliximab and etanercept treat rheumatoid arthritis by blocking which inflammatory signaling protein?

TNF-alpha is blocked in different ways: infliximab is a part-mouse, part-human antibody, while etanercept is a decoy receptor that soaks the signal up.

Which Nobel-winning chemist mapped the structures of penicillin and insulin despite rheumatoid arthritis from age 24?

Dorothy Hodgkin built a lever so she could still work the main switch on her X-ray equipment. Her structures of penicillin and vitamin B12 won her the 1964 Nobel Prize.

Paintings by which Flemish Baroque master may depict rheumatoid arthritis, long before doctors described it?

Rubens's later paintings show, in the opinion of some physicians, deformities consistent with the disease. Art historians note that painters of his era followed stylized conventions.

Which Eagles founding member died in 2016 of complications from rheumatoid arthritis, colitis and pneumonia?

Glenn Frey had lived with the disease since 2000. Some of the drugs that control it suppress the immune system, which can leave patients less able to fight off a lung infection.