Rheumatoid arthritis can start years before symptoms
Scientists have found that rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can actually start brewing in your immune system years before you feel any joint pain.
In a recent seven-year study, researchers tracked people with early warning signs of RA and healthy volunteers, observing that some at-risk individuals developed RA within an 18-month window.
Immune changes before the pain
Even if you feel totally fine, your immune cells could already be gearing up for RA.
The study saw that at-risk people had more inflammation and their T and B cells were acting differently—basically preparing for an autoimmune attack—long before any symptoms showed up.
Hope for early intervention
For those who eventually developed RA, certain immune cells kicked into overdrive and started producing molecules that damage joints.
Here's the hopeful part: these early changes look like the ones reversed by a current RA drug (abatacept).
Spotting these shifts sooner might let doctors step in earlier—maybe even stopping RA before it starts.