image by: HWN

HWN Suggests

Reactive Arthritis: Chronic or Self-Limiting?

Reactive arthritis is a sterile inflammatory arthritis that often occurs in the weeks following a gastrointestinal or genitourinary tract infection. A form of spondyloarthritis, it can present with myriad extra-articular features and has a variable, sometimes protracted, course that may warrant long-term immunosuppression. Due to varied presentations, numerous inciting organisms and a lack of specific biomarkers, reactive arthritis is challenging to categorize and study intensively. Therefore, management recommendations are often derived from case series and case reports.

read full article

Featured

 Reactive Arthritis: The Joint Pain That Follows an Infection and What Rheumatologists Recommend

Reactive arthritis is an autoimmune inflammatory condition that develops 1 to 4 weeks after a gastrointestinal or genitourinary infection, causing pain, swelling, and stiffness most often in the knees, ankles, and feet. Doctors diagnose it through clinical history, inflammation markers, and imaging, then treat it with NSAIDs, physical therapy, and—when needed—antibiotics, DMARDs, or biologics to relieve symptoms and prevent lasting joint damage. Because reactive arthritis overlaps with many other joint conditions and may also involve eye, skin, and urinary symptoms, pinpointing your specific pattern early is essential to getting the right care.

Articles of Interest

Expanding the spectrum of reactive arthritis (ReA)...

Reactive arthritis (ReA) is a form of sterile arthritis that occurs secondary to an extra-articular infection in genetically predisposed individuals. The extra-articular infection is typically an infection of the gastrointestinal tract or genitourinary tract.

Modern medical terms are still named after Nazi doctors. Can we change it?

In 1977, a group of doctors began a campaign to change the name of an inflammatory arthritis after discovering it was named after a Nazi doctor who planned and performed gruesome forced human experimentation that killed thousands. In one of these experiments, for example, Hans Conrad Julius Reiter inoculated Buchenwald concentration camp inmates with the microbe causing typhus, resulting in the deaths of over 250 people. The inflammatory arthritis then known as “Reiter’s syndrome,” the group of doctors suggested, should change its name to “reactive arthritis.”

My Experience of Reactive Arthritis

I haven’t written this post to illicit sympathy, but more for others should they go through the same thing. At the time I had no idea what was happening to my body and had never heard of reactive arthritis. On the bad days I would Google to see if I could find something other people had written about it, but only came across medical websites and jargon.

Reactive arthritis

Reactive arthritis is an uncommon disease that causes inflammation of the joints and, in many cases, other areas, particularly the urinary tract and eyes. It is triggered by an infection, usually by a sexually transmitted organism or by certain gastrointestinal bacteria. The most common infection causing reactive arthritis is the sexually transmitted disease (STD) chlamydia.

Reactive arthritis: the convoluted history of Reiter's disease

Reactive arthritis, previously known as Reiter's Syndrome or Disease was a post-dysenteric, asymmetrical acute large joint polyarthritis, with fever, conjunctivitis, iritis, purulent urethral discharge, rash and penile soft tissue swelling. Although the eponym was given to Hans Reiter, various forms of the condition have been recorded in history a few hundred years before Reiter.

There is a cure for arthritis – Reactive Arthritis (Reiter’s Syndrome)

Dr. Ettinger helped me build a program to stop what was causing my Reactive Arthritis (Reiter’s Syndrome) from attacking and destroying my body, and helped me repair my immune system to such a high degree that my body could actually heal itself. Note: My Reactive Arthritis was so bad that it was eating away the joints of my toes and causing permanent deformity. Luckily, I am constantly healing and rebuilding my bones back to normal.

Resources

Arthritis .org

Reactive arthritis is an inflammatory type of arthritis which affects the joints, and may affect the eyes, skin and urinary tract (bladder, vagina, urethra).

NORD

Reactive arthritis is a general term for a form of joint inflammation (arthritis) that develops as a "reaction" to an infection in another area of the body (i.e., outside of the joints).

Patient

Reactive arthritis is a form of seronegative spondyloarthritis clinically associated with inflammatory back pain, additive or migratory oligoarthritis and extra-articular symptoms that typically follow a gastrointestinal or urogenital infection by a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 3-6 weeks.

StatPearls

Although diagnosis is primarily clinical, the condition may be underrecognized because there are no universally accepted diagnostic criteria, and its presentation overlaps with other inflammatory and infectious arthritides.