Crohn’s Disease Arthritis

According to estimates, Crohn’s disease arthritis is believed to affect as many as twenty-six percent of patients that reported having a disorder in their guts and when such a condition affects a person, areas that are most affected include the ankles and knees, less than five joints and it can also occur at the same time as a flare-up of Crohn’s disease and then lasts for as long as ten weeks before improvement is noticed.

Polyarticular arthritis

There is also another form of Crohn’s disease arthritis and that is the rather rarer instance of polyarticular arthritis that closely resembles rheumatoid arthritis and it can affect a patient in the long term and often remains unaffected by bowel disease. To be sure, Crohn’s disease arthritis can also take the form of spinal arthritis and also sacroiliac arthritis that can often not be differentiated from spondylitis (ankylosing).

Often, doctors are able to establish that Crohn’s disease arthritis is affecting patients when they notice either symptoms of bowel disorders or joint disorders, and it is also common for Crohn’s disease arthritis to begin during the very first year of suffering from Crohn’s disease; more so in children. And in as many as it is believed seventy percent of cases, Crohn’s disease arthritis occurs when a flare-up of an intestinal disorder is taking place.

Nevertheless, actual diagnosis of Crohn’s disease arthritis can occur many years after the patient has become affected by arthritis and it can become even more pronounced when some symptoms related to the abdominal region are noticed and also when tests on fecal matter turn out as negative.

To treat Crohn’s disease arthritis, medications are used and the most common of these medications are non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as sulfasalazine and methotrexate.

Still, doctors generally test patients of arthritis to ascertain whether their condition is not in fact that of Crohn’s disease arthritis, and in fact, according to tests performed on patients with symptoms such as repeated pain in the abdomen, diarrhea as well as dysentery, most patients showed signs of Crohn’s disease arthritis because of being affected by the aforesaid symptoms.

Even a condition such as colitis arthritis can prove to be very painful for a patient and it is believed that such a condition can affect about a quarter of all people that suffer from inflammatory bowel disease including ulcerative colitis and Crohn’s disease.

Thus, the more enlightened you become about Crohn’s disease arthritis the better will be your chances of controlling the condition and it will also help initiate proper therapy to treat the symptoms.