Arthritis 101

Arthritis is a commonly encountered medical disorder that involves joint inflammation. To be precise, arthritis itself is not a disease but rather a syndrome, which is a medical term for a set of symptoms caused by various diseases and medical disorders. As you will see in the following discussion, arthritis symptoms can be caused by several well-established medical disorders. Regardless of the disease involved, the symptoms of arthritis are very similar and homogenous, with minor differences between the disorders. Moreover, the treatment and management of arthritis has many common features as well. In a simplified manner, arthritis may be viewed as a label to more than 50 diseases which affect the joints. Fortunately, only a few of them are commonly encountered, with the rest being medical rarities which are outside the scope of this article.