How widespread is rheumatoid arthritis?

[crimson]

I guess with my experience there are a lot who have this illness? Is US one of the countries leading in this?

[kageyd]

I'm new to RA, and just reading this forum tells me that many people have great difficulty achieving a definitive diagnosis of RA. They say that the RA factor test picks up only 80% at best of actual RA. Given those realities in knowing whether one does or does not have the illness, I'm sure that each country that collects data has its own way of going about it, and thus the stats are probably all over the map, as they are for many illnesses.

I haven't looked into this, but I'll keep my eyes open as I keep on reading about RA. Good question, thanks. Kageyd

[kageyd]

I just plugged "prevalence of rheumatoid arthritis around the world" into Google, and within the first ten results there were reports on Turkey, Hungary, Esklmos, and the US and Europe in general. The consensus seems to be about 1% overall, with women 2 to 3 times more likely than men to be diagnosed, and not much variation among countries. Given that low figure of 1%, there just isn't much room for variation.

So we're all 1 in a hundred! Good news for the 99%, not so good for us.

[naturelover]

kageyd wrote:

So we're all 1 in a hundred! Good news for the 99%, not so good for us.

But for us, this the most and 100% problems to get rid of RA. I think this 1% of people with this ailment is also because of untenable gene problem with a proximity of hereditary inheritance.

[kageyd]

Good point, but with caution. It may be that inheritance/genes are sometimes a cause of RA, but there aren't many genetic diseases that don't show themselves until later in life. And the statistics are that the majority of people with RA were initially diagnosed from age 35 on up. Now perhaps the RA was present at a younger age, just not diagnosed. Yet there are at least two of us active on the forum now (me, age 69, and Mac, age 62) who weren't diagnosed until our 60's. It's hard to think that our RA was caused by inheritance. Perhaps indeed one of our genes has gone haywire, but if a disease is truly "inherited" it most frequently shows up fairly early in life. The most famous "late" inherited disease is Huntington's Chorea - which, because it is truly genetic, can now be tested for in the young. We're not even close to that kind of expertise for RA - unfortunately.

[crimson]

Nice point there kageyd and thank you for the insights and I agree with you, if the RA is inherited it might show up in the early age and undiagnosed too and that's the sad truth about it even though there are symptoms already some don't bother to have their check up.

[naturelover]

It is a debatable question to say that RA is hereditary and that one is not able to identify in young age. The truth is it is paining on the part of the patient's mind always and curtail the movement.