Medicine’s constantly on the advance, it’s never really been a static science in any sense of the word. Almost every advance will help to improve someone’s life and as such every advance is important to someone. Huge amounts of time and money are poured into medical research every year and unlike a lot of the other scientific fields, medical advance are felt directly by us, the poorly public.
Fifty or sixty years ago rheumatoid was as common as it is today, if not more so. However, way back when, it almost always led to disfigurement of the joints and guaranteed mobility loss. Today we’ve lessened the risk of disability and helped to ease the loss of mobility but, medicine wouldn’t need to advance as much as it does if it was perfect and disfigurement and mobility loss do still occur.
A new treatment which targets a patient’s immune system has been developed which could limit or entirely remove the risk of disfigurement and as such, mobility loss. This treatment only works when it’s given very early after the diagnoses of rheumatoid arthritis and it works by modifying the immune system to better target the infection which causes the condition in the first place. It’s a highly aggressive treatment but it’s success rate is proving to be fairly high.
The important thing to take from this advancement is that arthritis must be caught early if you want to stand any chance of nulling or even negating its nastiest symptoms. As such, any swelling of your joints which persists beyond two weeks should be reported to your doctor, as should any joint pain which turns chronic. Better to be safe than sorry and save you the pain of full blown rheumatoid arthritis.
