Arthritis is a disease associated with inflammatory reactions that occur at the joints. There are various types of arthritis; psoriatic arthritis, diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis, arthritis associated with lupus, ankylosing spondylitis and rheumatoid arthritis. 

During my past days of general clinical practice, I had clients from various age groups who presented with swollen and painful joints.

Like in routine practice I carried out imaging examination and blood tests to rule out other differential diagnoses.  

Only a few patients at an advanced age had signs of degenerative disease or osteoarthritis where as the majority of my clients had arthritis test positive with associated reactive proteins. 

You can easily confuse the two diagnoses prior to clinical check-up. In osteoarthritis, imaging will show evidence of wear and tear that occurs progressively. This is why it is termed as a degenerative disease. 

I used to prescribe medications to one of my senior physicians who had a long standing chronic rheumatoid arthritis problem and in one of our discussions told me that the disease is predominant in one of his ancestors. 

Besides rheumatoid arthritis, even other kinds of arthritis commonly present with genetic predisposition unlike the case of degenerative type of arthritis. But sometimes you can have both in the same joint.

In autoimmune-related arthritis, your immune system decides to attack one or multiple joints of your body. 

Autoimmune arthritis can be cured. Some individuals get chance not to develop the disease at any stage in life if there are no other associated factors to intervene.

Genetic predispositions are largely triggered, maintained, and kept under control by environmental factors such as diet, lifestyle as well as the stress you might experience.

It is evident that development of the disease occurs when your immune system begins to identify some of your cells within joints as being harmful. In absence of any mechanism of control, inflammatory reaction will occur automatically.

 It is usually gradual and progressive illness like any other chronic health problem. Usually in auto-immune, the cells are abused by lack of optimal nourishment, accumulation of waste products, direct insult by excessive amounts of free toxins and above all  lack of rest with resultant low resting potential of cells.

In such circumstances, the body cells become less efficient to eliminate waste products such as exogenous toxins like air pollution among others.

Environmental wastes or exogenous wastes such as air pollution will incorporate in normal cell membranes and other immune cells will identify them as rebel cells. 

At this point, the immune cells will work to attack and eliminate such cells from the body. They are usually identified as old and damaged, therefore, deemed not necessary for the body function.

The pathological mechanism seen in autoimmune-related arthritis occurs just like in other infections. Whenever any harmful substance enters the bloodstream, the immune cells are alerted. 

In an effort to defend the body system, your immune system produces antibodies that seek out and attach themselves to these unwanted substances; these substances are generally referred to as antigens.

Once your antibodies attach themselves to antigens, antigen-antibody complexes are formed. Your immune system will work to eliminate these antigen-antibody complexes from your body so that the foreign antigens cannot harm your cells.

When there is high amount of antigen-antibody complexes formed, the immune cells might not be able to eliminate them as much as they are formed. 

This leads to deposition of such complexes into your joints where they cause inflammation and damage. 

Several scientific studies and theories point at the genetic predisposition as the determinant for site of choice, but there is always an outside chance based on other risk factors.

Once you have been diagnosed with autoimmune arthritis, it is important to check your lifestyle, especially the feeding pattern and the amount of emotional stress you experience as these are the two most important determinants of digestive health and immune system.

Dr Joseph Kamugisha is a resident oncologist in Jerusalem, Israel