Arthritis Treatments and Common Arthritis Symptoms

Rheumatoid arthritis is an immune system-related inflammatory disease. It is not known what the exact cause may be. But it is known that the immune system begins attacking the synovium, which is the tissue that lines your joints, causing pain and destruction. Being more common in women than in men, the age that the disease usually strikes is between 20 and 50.

Medications for Rheumatoid Arthritis Treatment

NSAIDS, or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs help in relieving both inflammation and pain if it is taken regularly. These are usually available over the counter such as aspirin, ketoprofen, Advil, Aleve, Motrin.

COX-2 inhibitors

NSAIDS may actually cause less damage to your stomach during rheumatoid arthritis treatment. COX-2 inhibitors are also other rheumatoid arthritis drugs. Celebrex and Bextra are two COX-2 inhibitors that suppress cyclooxygenase which is active in the inflammation of joints.Unlike some of the other NSAIDs, the COX-2 inhibitors only suppress COX -2, the enzyme that is involved in inflammation.

Corticosteroids.

These medications, which include prednisone and Medrol, not only reduce pain and inflammation but they also slow joint damage. In the short term, corticosteroids can help you feel amazingly better. However, when they are used for many months or year, the effectiveness wears off and may cause serious side effects.

DMARDs

This rheumatoid arthritis treatment is prescribed by your doctor in an effort to limit the amount of joint damage that is likely to occur with rheumatoid arthritis. You should take these drugs as soon as you have been diagnosed with the disease. It will slow this disease and save your joints and other tissues from being damaged permanently. It may take weeks or moths to notice any effect with these drugs as they work slowly.

Immunosuppressants

These rheumatoid arthritis drugs actually work to tame your body’s immune system. Additionally, some of these medications attack and eliminate cells that are associated with rheumatoid arthritis. Some of these rheumatoid arthritis treatment medications include Rheumatrex, Arava, Imuran, Neoral, Sandimmune and Cytoxan.

TNF Blockers

This is a class of DMARDs which are known as response modifiers. TNF is a cell protein and acts like an inflammatory agent. These rheumatoid arthritis drugs help to reduce pain, relieve morning stiffness and ease tender or swollen joints. There is now evidence that TNF blocker may actually halt the disease’s progression. Some of these medications include Enbrel, Remicade and Humira.

Antidepressant drugs

Oftentimes people with rheumatoid arthritis suffer from signs of depression. Some of the most common antidepressant drugs that are used as rheumatoid arthritis drugs are Elavil, Aventyl, Pamelor and trazodone.

Rheumatoid arthritis treatment can be complicated. You should research for yourself online to get the best out of your rheumatoid arthritis treatment, but leave the major decisions up to your doctor.

The most common and problematic form of inflammatory arthritis is rheumatoid arthritis. It causes massive joint inflammation and pain when cells of the body’s own immune system attack the joints. Three in every ten thousand are affected by the disease every year, and women about four times as much as men.

Modern treatments are available and viable, however, and you should know the options. These treatments can work to improve quality of life, slow disease progression, and prevent work disability. The newest treatments you should know about are in four different categories: Non-pharmacological treatments, pharmacological drugs, biologics, and Prosorba column therapy.

Non-pharmacological treatment

Non-pharmacological treatments focus on relieving the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis by strengthening your body against the disease or preventing symptoms of the disease from displaying in the first place by changing your environment. These include therapies such as physiotherapy and occupational therapy.

Pharmacological drugs

Analgesics are used to relieve the pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis. They can allow you to complete your daily activities without any pain by numbing pain receptors in your joints, but they do not actually treat the disease.

Anti-inflammatory medications are used much like analgesics to relieve the pain of the arthritis. However, they are also important to take for arthritis because they reduce the inflammation which can cause further joint damage.

Steroids are used to reduce the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. Steroids are signalling molecules which can signal cells in your body to change their biochemistry.

‘Disease modifying antirheumatic drugs’ are used in an attempt to target and eliminate the underlying cause of symptoms, or what is thought to be a cause of symptoms. They can have more serious side-effects than other drugs used for rheumatoid arthritis, but they may be required to prevent long-term damage.

Biologics

In a disease like rheumatoid arthritis, immune signalling molecules in your body called ‘cytokines’ are imbalanced. If this balance could be corrected, immune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis could be halted, theoretically.

Biologics are a new and promising class of medicines which, in the case of rheumatoid arthritis, can target immune signalling molecules and eliminate them from your system. This causes your immune system to stop attacking your joints and sends the disease into remission.

Prosorba Column Therapy

It is a last measure and is not widely used because the procedure is complicated, but it is actually just like dialysis for rheumatoid arthritis patients. Instead of filtering the blood for toxins, the blood is filtered for harmful antibodies, however.

The joint symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis are caused by damaging antibodies manufactured by the immune system which attack the joints. Removal of these antibodies would therefore be very beneficial in treatment. The column contains silica and an antibody-binding protein called Protein A.