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Stories for Reprint
CDC Says Millions with Joint Pain Don't See a Doctor
By Petya Stoeva, MARRTC Staff
One in four U.S. adults, or 51 million, have chronic joint symptoms, reports the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Chronic joint symptoms include joint pain, aching or stiffness for prolonged periods of time and may predict the onset of arthritis.
Data were from the CDC's latest nation-wide survey, conducted in 2002, which studied 31 thousand people and projected the results to the total U.S. population.
The five joints that most often felt painful in people with symptoms were the knees, shoulders, fingers, hips and ankles. Half of the survey participants who reported joint pain had it in only one joint, a quarter of the participants had symptoms in two joints, 12 percent had pain in three joints and 14 percent had pain in four or more joints.
As the number of joints with stiffness increased, the odds of having a doctor-diagnosed arthritis also increased, researchers found. People who had four or more joints with pain or stiffness were thus four times more likely to have an arthritis diagnosis than people with one painful joint. The odds of having severe pain and activity limitation also increased parallel to the number of painful joints.
Of all the adults with chronic joint symptoms, 4 million had four or more affected joints and various degrees of activity limitations and yet, had not seen a doctor for their symptoms.
The main message for these people is that they need to see their health care provider and get a diagnosis, says the study's lead researcher Dr. Jennifer Hootman, an epidemiologist at the CDC. Early diagnosis and intervention are especially important for people with inflammatory arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis, Hootman says. Unlike other types of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis can cause significant damage to joints early on, possibly before the disease is even diagnosed.
Of the 51 million people that are estimated to have chronic joint symptoms, about half are without an arthritis diagnosis. "Those are the people we're really interested in," Hootman says. "Some of them probably don't have arthritis but probably a good proportion has arthritis. If we can find out who those people are, maybe we can develop some [public health] campaign down the road."
Three different CDC surveys will investigate people with joint symptoms, Hootman says. The first one is the currently released study. A four-state survey with more in-depth questions is now taking place in Kansas, Arkansas, Utah and North Carolina and will be released in the first half of 2006. The same and more questions will be used later in the Arthritis Conditions Health Effects Survey. This more extensive survey will cover all 50 states and its results will become public in late 2006.
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