What is arthritis? A brief overview.

It might sound like a silly question - after all, almost all of us know someone with arthritis. We're all familiar with creaky knees and gnarled fingers, particularly in the elderly. But there's a lot more to arthritis than this. It's thought that there are well over 100 different kinds of arthritis, ranging from the common to the extremely rare, and the vast majority don't discriminate in who is affected.

I'll be delving into some of the more common types of arthritis in later posts, but here is a brief overview of the three main subtypes.

1) Inflammatory Arthritis. An umbrella term describing a group of conditions in which a person's immune system starts attacking their own tissues - a process called 'autoimmune disease'. The resulting damage to the joints causes pain and stiffness, and can lead to irreversable changes within the joint itself. The most common forms of inflammatory arthritis include Rheumatoid Arthritis, Psoriatic Arthritis and Ankylosing Spondylitis. In some cases, other parts of the body may be also affected by the inflammation.

2) Non-Inflammatory Arthritis. The most common form of non-inflammatory arthritis is osteoarthritis, which is the condition most people tend to think of when talking about arthritis. Unlike inflammatory arthritis, there is no autoimmune response, and the pain is usually caused by 'wear and tear', or mechanical problems in the joint. Other non-inflammatory forms of arthritis include fibromyalgia and scoliosis. Contrary to popular thinking, osteoarthritis can affect people of any age.

3) Connective Tissue Disease. There's an overlap here with inflammatory arthritis, as most connective tissue diseases are autoimmune in nature, and tend to cause inflammation in the joint. Typically, connective tissue diseases are systemic, meaning they affect multiple systems within the body. Examples include SLE (Lupus), Sjogren's syndrome, Ehlers-Danlos syndrome and Scleroderma.

Just to complicate matters further, there's also Septic Arthritis to consider - usually a temporary condition, it's caused by a bacterial infection within the joint. Most patients suffer no long-term damage.

Arthritis affects around 10 million people in the UK, and may be a secondary complaint to a diverse range of conditions including Ulcerative Colitis, Hepatitis and Haemochromatosis. Around 27,000 arthritis sufferers are under the age of 25. A report by Arthritis Care revealed that up to 34% of people they surveyed would not consider visiting a doctor, and that a further 50% would need frequent, unbearable pain before seeing a healthcare professional. As you can see, it's important to challenge the oft-repeated myths that arthritis only affects the elderly and that it is an inevitable part of ageing - there's still so much that can be done!