Some 46 million people suffer from arthritis in the United States alone. The worst cases require painful surgeries to drill holes in and reinforce joints. Now researchers working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) are studying an unusually pliant yet strong synthetic cartilage replacement in hopes of providing arthritis victims with some relief.

Researchers in Germany report an advance toward the much awaited era in which scientists will discover and design drugs for cancer, arthritis, AIDS and other diseases almost entirely on the computer, instead of relying on the trial-and-error methods of the past.

A University of Central Florida research team has discovered a new protein family that may play an important role in preventing inflammatory diseases such as arthritis, some forms of cancer and even heart disease.

In an article recommended by Annelies Boonen of Faculty of 1000 Medicine, researchers look at the way rheumatoid arthritis is diagnosed by analysing the administrative databases used by physicians in Quebec.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis are twice as likely to experience depression but are unlikely to talk to a doctor about it, according to researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the most common chronic inflammatory arthritis, are twice as likely as other individuals to experience depression. Although depression in primary care has been well studied, no studies have examined whether rheumatologists and RA patients discuss depression during medical visits.

Celebrex, a popular arthritis drug that blocks pain by inhibiting an enzyme known as COX-2, has been shown in laboratory studies to induce arrhythmia, or irregular beating of the heart, via a novel pathway unrelated to its COX-2 inhibition.

In studies involving more than 35,000 people and a survey across the entire human genome, an international team supported in part by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has found evidence that common genetic variants recently linked to osteoarthritis may also play a minor role in human height.

Common genetic variants linked to arthritis may also play a role in human height, a new study shows.

Patients with arthritis, the country’s leading cause of disability, tend to be less fit than their peers who don’t have this condition. Studies have shown, however, that they can safely participate in exercise programs to increase their fitness, strength and psychosocial status and that health providers recommend that arthritis patients participate in exercise.

Arthritis is the most common cause of disability in the United States. Over the next 25 years as the Baby Boom generation continues to age, the toll of this disease will escalate.

Lyme disease in the U.S. is caused by a form of bacteria, the spirochete Borrelia burgdorferi, infecting humans by tick bites.