Emotionally, rheumatoid arthritis can cause clinical depression and anxiety.
Many people report feeling sad, hopeless, guilty, or unmotivated in the weeks or months following their diagnosis. Depression can also result from stress when you have RA. The autoimmune disease reduces your body's ability to handle stress, so you may feel the psychological effects more strongly.
Chronic inflammation impairs the physiological responses to stress including effective coping behaviours, resulting in depression, which leads to a worse long-term outcome in RA.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can lead to anxiety, depression, and bipolar disorder through a variety of mechanisms. Biologically, the chronic inflammation from RA has been linked to a higher incidence of anxiety and depression.
RA causes chronic inflammation. Along with its effects on the joints, RA may cause brain fog, which can involve difficulty concentrating, poor memory, or confused thoughts. RA is a degenerative condition, meaning it tends to worsen over time and with age if people do not treat it correctly.
Chronic systemic inflammation is a hallmark of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Growing evidence from observational studies shows that RA is associated with an approximately 40% increase in risk of cognitive decline and incident dementia.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is associated with various nonarticular manifestations, including a range of neurologic abnormalities, such as cervical spine instability, compressive neuropathy (eg, of the median nerve at the wrist, which results in carpal tunnel syndrome [CTS]), and an often subclinical sensory or ...
Remember, RA causes your body's immune system to attack the lining between your joints, which causes inflammation and swelling. That swelling can alter the way the nerves in your brain communicate. Inflammation in the brain, with or without other RA-related neurologic changes, can lead to brain fog.
Abstract. Background: Patients with rheumatic diseases are more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression and insomnia.
The difficult nature of rheumatoid arthritis can mean some people develop depression or feelings of stress and anxiety. Sometimes these feelings can be related to poorly controlled pain or fatigue. Living with a long-term condition makes you more likely to have emotions such as frustration, fear, anger and resentment.
Having any form of arthritis — osteoarthritis (OA), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), psoriatic arthritis (PsA), juvenile arthritis, lupus, ankylosing spondylitis, gout, fibromyalgia or related conditions — can have a negative effect on your mental health. This most commonly manifests as depression or anxiety.
RA commonly affects joints in the hands, wrists, and knees. In a joint with RA, the lining of the joint becomes inflamed, causing damage to joint tissue. This tissue damage can cause long-lasting or chronic pain, unsteadiness (lack of balance), and deformity (misshapenness).
RA doesn't directly shorten your life. But it does raise your odds of getting some serious health conditions (your doctor will call them complications) that could affect your health and life expectancy: Heart disease. RA makes you more likely to develop cardiovascular disease.
Outlook for people with rheumatoid arthritis
Nevertheless, with the right treatment, many people can live past the age of 80 or even 90 years while experiencing relatively mild symptoms and only minor limitations on day-to-day life.
Rheumatoid arthritis can at times put a strain on social relationships. Pain and loss of independence can make people feel frustrated, angry, and depressed, which can in turn affect other members of the family.
People with RA are more likely to have narrowed or blocked arteries in the brain – the result of systemic inflammation. This can cause problems with memory, thinking and reasoning.
In many cases of patients who had rheumatic fever--at times undiagnosed--there is a chronic involvement of the brain as a result of disseminated recurrent obliterating arteritis or emboli in the small blood vessels, especially in the brain membranes or the cortex.
rheumatoid arthritis. MRI can clearly identify some of the signs of osteoarthritis, including whether cartilage is wearing away. MRI can also detect signs of rheumatoid arthritis, but a doctor will also use a variety of other tests, such as blood tests. Doctors can distinguish between soft tissues and fluids using MRI.
Research proves that dogs are sensitive to physiological cues that are not obvious to us humans. Such cues include skin temperature and unusual scents. A painful joint with arthritis has increased heat and may emit inflammatory odors; odors that are undetectable to us humans, but scents our dogs can detect.
MRI and ultrasound enable early diagnosis, follow-up, treatment and postinflammatory joint damage assessment of synovial joints in patients with RA. MRI additionally shows bone marrow inflammation and axial spine involvement.
If you have rheumatoid arthritis, you're at a higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease (CVD). CVD is a general term that describes conditions affecting the heart or blood vessels, and it includes life-threatening problems such as heart attack and stroke.
Possible complications include carpal tunnel syndrome, inflammation of other areas of the body (such as the lungs, heart and eyes), and an increased risk of heart attacks and strokes. Ensuring that rheumatoid arthritis is well controlled helps reduce your risk of complications such as these.