MD Forty million Americans suffer from arthritis , the painful, often debilitating disease that can affect every joint in your body. Actually, it isn't just one disease.
Arthritis is a whole class of illnesses that comes in more than a hundred varieties.
And 3 million or so more have rheumatoid arthritis , a chronic inflammation of the joints that causes pain, stiffness, swelling and loss of function. These numbers will rise dramatically over the next few years, both because the baby-boom generation is aging and because the elderly are living longer. Unfortunately, the standard treatment for arthritis is the nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, or nsaids, a group that includes aspirin and ibuprofen. Too often these medicines have unacceptable side effects, including internal bleeding and ulcers. Now some new drugs are generating a lot of medical buzz, including a special session at the recent meeting of the American College of Rheumatology in Boston and several reports in last week's Journal of the American Medical Association .