All About Arthritis

The most prevalent type of inflammatory arthritis is rheumatoid arthritis. It is actually an immune disease which causes cells in your immune system to attack the joints in your body. For the 3 people in 10,000 it affects every year, it can be a very debilitating disease. Left untreated, it can reduce a person’s lifespan by up to 20 years.

New treatment options are used fairly effectively to control the progression of the disease however. They can increase the quality of a patient’s life and prevent missed work. The treatments fall into four categories: Non-pharmacological, pharmacological drugs, biologics, and Prosorba column therapy.

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These types of treatments are used to relieve the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, without targeting the cause of it, but by keeping your body strong against the disease. Non-pharmacological treatments include 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 can be taken to alleviate the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. They act by signalling cells in your body to change their biochemistry in certain ways – they can tell your body to fight the disease itself.

‘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

With rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system disorder arises because immune signalling molecules called ‘cytokines’ are not in balance. If they could be balanced, the disease could theoretically be halted.

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

Prosorba column therapy is much like dialysis for rheumatoid arthritis patients – but instead of filtering blood for toxins, it filters blood for antibodies.

These damaging antibodies are what causes an attack in the joints of patients. Removal of these antibodies results in relief from the disease for months. The column contains silica and a protein which binds antibodies called Protein A.