According to researchers at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) appears to be increasing in women after 40 years of decline.
In a report that was published earlier this year, researchers from the National Arthritis Data Workgroup stated that an estimated 1.3 million adults in the U.S. are affected by RA. This compares to the estimate of 2.1 million in 1995.
However, the group decided to take a look at more recent data than that used for the Workgroup study. To this end, they recruited 350 patients with RA in Olmstead County, Minnesota that were diagnosed between 1995 and 2005 and then looked at the population as a whole to determine the incidence rate.
Based on this more recent data, Dr. Hilal Maradit-Kremers, associate professor of epidemiology at the Mayo Clinic, and colleagues, found that 54 women out of every 100,000 develop rheumatoid arthritis each year as compared to 36 out of every 100,000 10 years earlier.
The incidence for men remained the same at 29 per 100,000.
“These rates would apply to the entire U.S. population,” Kremers says. “Based on this new data, the estimated number of people with RA in the U.S. is probably higher than 1.2 million.”
It is believed that the increase in the incidence rate is a result of environmental, and possibly hormonal, causes.
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Originally posted 2008-11-19 12:00:37. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
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RA is a common symptom of Lyme disease, which is a fast-growing bacterial infection spread by the bite a tick. Often people with Lyme infection develop terrible arthritis and miss getting correctly diagnosed with Lyme. Lyme symptoms can be alleviated with proper medicine, such as antibiotics. However, Lyme is a serious disease and can become even more debilitating if left untreated. If you cannot explain your RA, please see a Lyme literate specialist and get tested for Lyme disease.
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