One-fifth of American states don’t have pediatric rheumatologists to care for their share of the estimated 300,000 children with some form of juvenile arthritis. Arthritis is primarily thought of as an old person's disease, but the truth is, two-thirds of arthritic Americans are under the age of 65.
Symptoms of juvenile arthritis (JA), such as joint pain or swelling, generally surface in children six months old to 16 years old. No one knows what causes arthritis in adolescents. KidsHealth.org describes JA as an auto-immune disease in which white blood cells cease to identify the differences between threats and the body’s own healthy cells. The immune system then randomly releases chemicals that also damage healthy tissues, causing pain and inflammation.
Though there still isn’t a scientifically proven cause, Dr. James N. Jarvis, pediatric rheumatologist and pediatrics professor at OU Health Sciences Center, said that the science community now knows arthritis is much more complicated than white blood cells.
“There are probably complex interactions between multiple parts of the immune system, as well as brain, liver, and blood vessels that contribute to the disease.”
The American College of Rheumatology also suggests that certain children have a genetic disposition to JA, but don’t develop the disease until they are exposed to an infectious trigger like the flu.
The most common form of juvenile arthritis is called juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA), though it is also referred to as juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) and juvenile chronic arthritis (JCA). It is characterized by pain, swelling, and stiffness in any number of the child’s joints.
JRA is further divided into three main categories: pauciarticular, polyarticular, and systematic onset. Pauciarticular JRA affects four or fewer joints and is usually concentrated around the smaller joints in the wrist and ankles. Polyarticular JRA generally affects the larger joints but any child with arthritis in five or more joints can be diagnosed.
Systematic onset JRA is a fairly new division of arthritis, only having been diagnosed in patients in the past few years. Systematic onset is very different from the other two types of JRA in that children with systematic onset have a long list of side symptoms that have little to do with the joints themselves. Patients develop sudden high fevers often accompanied by a rash or pale skin that fades with the fever but can quickly reappear.
Article comments
1 - Michael
I think you meant tumor necrosis factor (TNF)?