I was always grateful that I was able to go through my formative years and school years without the disease. The problems that the rheumatoid arthritis caused for me were adult problems. Children with the disease face the challenge of trying to grow up and cope with the affliction at the same time. When people under the age of sixteen are affected by arthritis it is usually classified differently. The reason it is separately classified is because the course of the disease in children is usually different than it is in adults.
Children experience different symptoms and generally have a more favorable prognosis.
Childhood arthritis is often referred to as JRA or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, juvenile chronic arthritis, and Still's disease. These names are somewhat misnomers. JRA and adult onset RA differ in some characteristics but the names indicate strict similarity. Juvenile chronic arthritis is a misnomer since juvenile arthritis is not always chronic. There are at least three main subsets of childhood arthritis, each affecting different joints with a distinct pattern of symptoms.