Reactive arthritis - symptoms and causes of the disease in adults

Reactive arthritis refers to inflammatory lesions of joints of a non-natural character. Most often, this disease develops after the infection of the urogenital or digestive system.

Often, this pathology is associated with a certain histocompatibility antigen present in the patient's body, and infectious agents act as only a trigger mechanism, the interaction of which with the body's immune system leads to the development of reactive joint damage.

In the case when the patient develops reactive arthritis - the symptoms of the disease develop most often in patients 20-40 years old. The defeat of joints after a previous urogenital infection most often develops in men.

In women, reactive arthritis develops in most cases after intestinal infections.

It is worth noting that in some cases, not only the organs of the genitourinary system or the intestines become the gates of the infection, but also the nasal part of the pharynx.

Pathological microorganisms that are capable of provoking the development of reactive arthritis are chlamydia, salmonella, shigella.

If the patient develops reactive arthritis - the cause of damage to the synovial membrane of the joints may also be the effect of ureaplasma, staphylococci and streptococci, influenza viruses or herpes.

So, the etiology of reactive arthritis in most cases involves the interaction of infectious agents and hereditary factors that determine the specific nature of the development of immune responses in the patient's body.

In the overwhelming majority of cases, reactive arthritis affects large joints, the lesion has a volatile character - the signs of joint damage quickly arise and quickly disappear, I mix to the joint, which remained intact yesterday.

There is almost no simultaneous damage to four or more large joints, and the joints of the lower extremities are more often affected than arthritis of the shoulder, elbow and wrist joint.

Reactive arthritis of the hip joint develops in metabolic disorders, especially with gout, as well as in the presence of concomitant autoimmune rheumatic pathologies, with constant joint loads, for example, with flat feet - with timely diagnosis and early treatment with this option.

The main clinical manifestations of reactive arthritis

It should be noted that with reactive arthritis, symptoms that indicate a pathological process in the joints most often develop as an immune response to the effects of infectious factors, but after some time after getting the causative agent of the disease in the body.

Symptoms of reactive arthritis - joint damage occurs at a young age after an intestinal infection or, for example, after urethritis, which occurs against the background of sexually transmitted diseases.

If the intestinal infection is the trigger, the symptoms of joint damage are combined with diarrhea. If the development of this type of arthritis provoked an infection of the urinary organs, then dysuric phenomena and pyuria develop( excretion of pus with urine).

In reactive arthritis, Reiter's syndrome( damage to the eyes in the form of severe forms of conjunctivitis) is combined with joint arthritis and urogenital infection.

Symptoms of reactive arthritis of the hip joint depend on the nature of the lesion. So, with purulent coke, a rapid development of the pathological process is observed, high temperature, pain in the joint and lameness due to pain.

With a lesion of a non-purulent nature, clinical symptoms develop slowly but steadily progress.

If reactive arthritis develops in children, the symptoms of the lesion include painful sensations that cause the child to limp, hold the pen or iron fingers.

The peculiarity of jet joint damage in this age group is the damage not only of large, but also small joints. This condition requires immediate diagnosis to exclude rheumatoid arthritis and the appointment of a specific treatment.

Reactive arthritis in children is diagnosed not only on the basis of patients' complaints - they also actively use a general blood test, rheumatological tests and rheumatoid factor tests for immunological examination to detect antibodies in the blood serum to a possible pathogen of arthritis, and an x-ray examination of the inflamed joint.

In those cases when developing reactive arthritis in patients of young and middle age, a thorough clinical and laboratory examination allows excluding the autoimmune character of the disease.

Even if a patient has specific antibodies to pathogens that can provoke reactive arthritis and antibodies characteristic of systemic collagenoses, it is necessary to treat an autoimmune disease using all the possibilities of modern rheumatology.