Word: rheumatoid
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...well when the body needs to fend off an acute attack--say, from invading viruses or bacteria. But when the problem is chronic, as in osteoarthritis, the white blood cells may overreact, repeatedly releasing so many of their "mopping up" proteins that even healthy tissue is laid waste. In rheumatoid arthritis (see box), the immune-system response is particularly aggressive...
...debilitating as osteoarthritis can be, it at least develops gradually. That may not seem like much consolation until you consider the other arthritis--rheumatoid arthritis--which in severe cases can hit as fast and hard as a freight train. "People who are jogging one day," says Dr. Stanley Cohen of Dallas' St. Paul Medical Center, "can't get out of bed two weeks later...
Although their symptoms can be similar, the two diseases are very different. Unlike osteoarthritis, which is focused on a particular joint, rheumatoid arthritis is a systemic disease--an autoimmune disorder in which the body's defense system attacks the joints by way of the thin layer of cells called the synovium that line and lubricate the joints. The runaway immune response clogs the synovium with infection-fighting cells that release proteins called cytokines. These are compounds that fuel inflammation. The synovium becomes engorged with new blood vessels and begins to grow, kudzu-like, penetrating and further damaging cartilage and bone...
...Major Dundee and a prisoner of war in the World War II drama The Great Escape. The wry actor gained star stature in the late 1960s as the lead in the James Bond spoofs Our Man Flint and In Like Flint. In 1998, coming back from a bout with rheumatoid arthritis that incapacitated him in the 1980s, Coburn won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as Nick Nolte's abusive, alcoholic father in Affliction. On accepting the award, he said, "I finally got one right...
Offering a significant advance in the understanding of rheumatoid arthritis, researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and the Joslin Diabetes Center have found that specialized immune cells may play a role in fostering the painful condition...