Did You Know…
Arthritis Costs America Billions of Dollars

In 2007, the cost of treating arthritis was more than 15 billion dollars; the overall cost in lost productivity was 150 billion. It is estimated that in an average family, a diagnosis of arthritis in the primary wage-earner will lead to a 50% drop in income over the first 10 years.

Source:Arthritis Insight

The Level of Inflammation in RA Remains Stable

A study conducted by the National Data Bank for Rheumatic Disease-Arthritis Research Center Foundation, has determined that the level of inflammation in rheumatoid arthritis is determined early and remains stable over the longterm course of the illness.

Over ten years, the erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) was analyzed to measure inflammatory activity in 1,897 patients with RA. Scientists found that the ESR decreased by 4 mm/h over the first 10 years of disease, remained stable over the next 25 years, and increased slightly thereafter.

This is disappointing since earlier theories suggested that RA tended to “burn out” or lessen in severity over the years. However, the good new is that the very recently diagnosed who were receiving combination therapies did show marked improvement in symptoms, rather than remaining stable.

RA is a “New” Disease

Contrary to earlier reports, rheumatoid arthritis is a “new” disease, not described until the mid-1700’s. There have been many reports that RA existed in ancient times, but there is no scientific evidence that the disease existed in ancient Europe, Asia or Africa.

However, in Alabama, six skeletons of Native Americans–3,000 to 5,000 years old–show changes typical of RA. Scientists believe that some infectious agent was introduced and confined to a small geographic area before 1700’s.

Why is this important? If RA did appear recently, that suggests some environmental change could have triggered RA because the human gene structure has not changed in the last 250 years.

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