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].