Arthritis referrs to “inflammation of the joints”, or perhaps more correctly – painful joints. Arthritis can be considered to be of four main types:
- Osteoarthritis – a degenerative form of arthritis
- Inflammatory arthritis – such as rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune conditions
- Crystal arthritis – such as gout
- Spondyloarthritis – such as ankylosing spondylitis
When assessing joint pain, we use various terms to describe the pattern and types of arthritis.
Definitions
- Arthropathy – means disease of a joint. Sometimes used synonymously with arthritis, but generally used when referring to joint pathology, and used for specific conditions:
- Reactive arthropathy – infection in another part of the body causes autoimmune reaction against the joint
- Crystal arthropathy – due to crystal deposition in a joint
- Monoarthritis – disease of only 1 joint
- Oligoarthritis – disease of 2-5 joints
- Polyarthritis – disease of 6+ joints
- Morning stiffness – refers to joint stiffness lasting greater than 30 minutes after waking, and typically a feature of spondyloarthritis and inflammatory arthritis