This increase is largely due to the aging of the U.S. population. While risk increases with age, arthritis, a broad set of disorders, is not limited to the elderly. More than one-half of the people who reported having arthritis were under age 65. Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, affecting 12.1 percent of U.S. adults or 20.7 million people. Also known as degenerative joint disease, osteoarthritis was the second most common diagnosis, after chronic heart disease, leading to Social Security disability payments due to long-term absence from work.
Arthritis is a leading cause of disability.
With the aging of the population, it will increasingly burden individuals as well as the economy. It updates a 1989 report and includes estimates for disorders not included in the earlier report, such as fibromyalgia, low back pain, polymyalgia rheumatica, and giant cell arteritis. The report was developed by the National Arthritis Data Workgroup. The report focuses on estimates of prevalence or existing cases of each disorder rather than incidence, which counts only the number of new cases within a given period of time. National prevalence estimates were calculated by applying data from several studies to the 1990 Census, the most recent population estimates available.