Osteoarthritis- Causes, Symptoms, and treatment

Osteoarthritis is also known as osteoarthrosis is falsely called degenerative joint disease, it is the most common form of arthritis. Osteoarthritis has a strong association with an increase in age and is a leading cause of pain and disability in elderly people. Osteoarthritis is a condition of synovial joints that is characterized by loss of the articular hyaline cartilage with the rapid formation of new bone and remodeling of joint contour.

Signs of inflammation are not specifically found in osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis selectively targets specific small and large joints, osteoarthritis is a dynamic repair process of synovial joints, which is triggered by a variety of noxious factors.

Types of Osteoarthritis:

Primary osteoarthritis.

Secondary osteoarthritis.

Primary osteoarthritis:

Primary osteoarthritis occurs in old age, it mainly affects joints which have to bear the weight of the body like knee and hip joint, the generalized variety of primary osteoarthritis joints of the thumb and finger joints are affected, this type of osteoarthritis is more common than secondary osteoarthritis.

Secondary osteoarthritis:

This type of osteoarthritis is related to some underlying primary disease of the joints, which in turn leads degeneration of joints, secondary osteoarthritis occurs at any age after adolescence, and affects hip joint commonly. The predisposing factors of secondary osteoarthritis are:

Excessive weight and obesity

Maldevelopment of a joint that is congenital (present by birth).

Irregularities of the surface of the joint which is due to trauma.

Damaged articular surface due to any previous disease.

Internal derangement of the knee like a loose body.

Bowleg etc.

Any major trauma or injury and continuous use of joints are very important risk factors for the development of osteoarthritis. The pattern that how joints are involved is also influenced by types of vocational overload.

Causes of osteoarthritis:

There are many causes like metabolic, mechanical, genetics and other factors that may damage a synovial joint.

The cause is unclear in primary osteoarthritis, but the trauma is the main cause of secondary osteoarthritis.

Loss of articular cartilage, OA is not a disease of only cartilage, rather a disease of synovial joint, in which subchondral bone, synovium, meniscus, ligaments all are affected.

Clinical features of osteoarthritis:

The patient of osteoarthritis is elderly over the age of 45 years often over the age of 60. The hip joint OA is found mostly in western wold and knee OA is mostly found in Asians because they have a habit of squatting and sitting crosslegged.

The main symptoms are pain and functional restriction.

Pain may be aggravated at night.

Mostly major joints of lower limbs are involved, in both limbs.

Pain in osteoarthritis may occur intermittently in starting but become constant after some time.

Pain at the start of OA is dull and aggravates after starting an activity, but after some time pain becomes worse and occurs after activity.

Crepitus is present in some patients.

The swelling of joints is a late feature that is caused by the effusion which is caused by inflammation tissues of the synovium.

There is a period of good and bad days of pain.

Morning stiffness is brief less than 15 minutes.

There is no regional pain but only one or a few joints are only painful.

Nodal generalized OA:

Mostly in middle-aged women who are between 40-50 years of age group.

This is presented by pain, stiffness, and swelling of one or more finger joints ,as time passes more finger joints are involved.

There is development of Heberden’s nodes (distal finger joints) and Bouchard’s nodes (proximal finger joints).

Each joint go through a phase of episodic symptoms which takes one to five Read more..