Study Finds Link to Rheumatoid Arthritis in the Microbiome

Really exciting news! We're getting much closer to finding the cause of RA:


"A new study has found a direct link between specific bacteria in the gut and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) -- an exciting discovery that could bring us closer to understanding the cause or causes of RA.
Micro bacteria in the gut

 Each of us has a collection of microbacteria in our guts. The collection, which weighs roughly three pounds in an adult, is called the microbiome and is made up of about 1,000 different bacterium species. Microbacteria play an important role in our health: some protect us against illness, while others possibly play a role in the development of certain illnesses.

Previous research has implicated certain specific microbacteria as being associated with RA, but the exact role and dynamic was not known."

Find out more about this study and its implications in my HealthCentral post.
 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Farber’s Disease: Could Your Child’s Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Be Misdiagnosed?

Image
Joint inflammation or contractures. Nodules (small lumps under the skin or in other tissues). A weakened or hoarse voice. Children with these symptoms may have been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or other types of juvenile arthritis . But do they actually have JIA or do they have Farber’s disease? An equine digression When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. This is an adage in the medical world that encourages doctors to not wander off exploring rare and esoteric reasons for a patient’s symptoms. Because most of the time, that hoof beat of a rash likely isn’t the plague, the joint pain more likely a type of arthritis than the bends (especially if the person has never scuba dived) and you get the picture. But once in a while, it actually is a zebra. And even if it’s first identified as a horse, eventually, the stripes come through. It took five years of my parents running around to different doctors before one finally recognized that I had...
Read more

13 Things to Know for Rheumatoid Arthritis Newbies + Facebook Live

Image
Getting a diagnosis of any type of chronic illness can throw you for loop. There is so much to know and you have so little energy. My new slideshow for HealthCentral collects 13 things you need to know as an RA newbie : "Receiving a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a moment of strange duality. On one hand, you may be relieved to finally have answers for the symptoms you’ve been experiencing. On the other, it can be incredibly overwhelming to find out you have a chronic illness. Wrapping your head around all the new factors RA brings into your life is a long-term process. Here are some of the things you need to know." See the slideshow on HealthCentral . And in case you missed it, here is the Facebook Live I did yesterday talking about this topic:   
Read more