ABSTRACT
There are several categories of arthritis and they differ in etiology
and clinical features. Many rheumatic disorders are characterized
by a type of arthritis arising from systemic inflammation involving
a number of organs and joints. The etiology of diseases like
rheumatoid arthritis is still somewhat unclear, but it is often
described as an autoimmune systemic inflammatory disease. In
this chapter, I will concentrate on osteoarthritis (OA), since the
clinical applications will largely be the same. However, the systemic
inflammatory component seems to bemore dominant in rheumatoid
arthritis than in OA [1].