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If you have rheumatoid arthritis, your joints become painful, stiff and swollen. For some people, their symptoms come and go. But for others, their symptoms slowly get worse over many years.

You may worry about being in pain. You may also worry that your joints will become so damaged that you'll have to stop working. And you may be concerned about how your joints look.

There is no cure for rheumatoid arthritis, but there are treatments that can both ease your pain and prevent your joints from wearing down. These treatments help many people with rheumatoid arthritis live active and happy lives.

• In rheumatoid arthritis, your immune system, which normally fights infection, attacks the lining of your joints. This makes your joints swollen, stiff and painful.
• The small joints of your hands or feet are usually affected first.
• Rheumatoid arthritis usually affects similar joints on both sides of your body.
• It is most common after the age of 40.
• Doctors can have a hard time diagnosing rheumatoid arthritis because it often starts slowly.
• It's important to start treatments early to keep your joints from wearing down.

To understand how rheumatoid arthritis affects you, it helps to know something about your joints.

A joint is where two bones meet.

• On the outside of a joint are the ligaments. They are strong fibers that keep the bones in place. The fibers around a joint are called the joint capsule.
• Inside the joint capsule is the lining of the joint. Doctors call it the synovial membrane. This lining makes a fluid called synovial fluid that keeps the joint moving smoothly, much like oil in a car engine.
• The ends of bones in the joint are covered by cartilage. This material is hard and slippery and makes the ends of the bones smooth so that they can move easily.

The body's immune system normally helps to defend us against infections and diseases. But in rheumatoid arthritis, the immune system goes wrong.

As well as attacking and destroying germs like bacteria and viruses, your immune system attacks your joints. This makes your joints swell and become painful.

Over many years, this can make your joints lose their shape and stop working properly.¹.

We don't know why some people get rheumatoid arthritis. But scientists think that it happens more often in people who have particular genes.

Many scientists think that a virus may cause rheumatoid arthritis. But they think you have to have certain genes to be affected by the virus.² The research is still in an early stage and scientists haven't proved this yet.

Certain things make you more likely to get rheumatoid arthritis. These are called risk factors.

Here are the risk factors for rheumatoid arthritis.

• Family history and genes: Rheumatoid arthritis can sometimes run in families. But if you have a close relative with rheumatoid arthritis, it does not mean you will definitely get the disease.³
• Being a woman: Rheumatoid arthritis is almost three times more common in women than in men.⁴ We don't know why this is, but researchers think that it may have something to do with the effects of female hormones like estrogen.⁵
• Being middle-aged: People usually get rheumatoid arthritis in their 40s, but you can also get it in your 20s or 30s.⁶