Do you have ongoing joint pain and aches? Maybe they're migrating from your knees to your elbows, to your shoulders. Maybe you've been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and are wondering, can rheumatoid arthritis be cured?
In this video we're going to discuss this specific question. Can rheumatoid arthritis be cured? We're going to look at a new study on a bacteria in the gut that's been associated with rheumatoid arthritis and what that might mean for treatment and diagnostics around rheumatoid arthritis.
Research Articles:
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/1...
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33594...
Can rheumatoid arthritis be cured? Well, before we look at whether or not it can or can't be cured, let's first discuss what this actually means to be cured from rheumatoid arthritis.
When it comes to rheumatoid arthritis or any autoimmune disease, for that matter, you have to consider the long-term consequences of this unregulated immune activity on the joints and in the tissues of the body, depending on which particular autoimmune disease you have. In this case, it's going to be your joints.
In that regard, the lack of symptoms like pain or discomfort in those joints doesn't necessarily mean that there's no activity or unregulated immune response in the joints themselves.
For instance, you may have elevated rheumatoid factor, a relatively high C-reactive protein, sed rate, and other autoantibodies in your blood. Your joint pain may be relatively manageable and mild with the use of over-the-counter, non-steroidal anti-inflammatories. However, it would be a mistake to assume that there's no ongoing joint damage in your body just because your joint pain is relatively mild.
So when we're asking this question, can rheumatoid arthritis be cured? We also have to consider what we mean by that. And in looking at that, we don't want to just say that you don't have any symptoms. We also want to see the absence of elevations of markers of rheumatoid arthritis in your blood.
So answering this question from a conventional medicine rheumatology perspective, generally speaking, RA cannot be cured and generally is looked at as a condition that can be managed with medications like biological medications and medications that suppress the immune system activity and therefore decrease the effect on the joints.
On the other hand, there are lots of claims about different approaches regarding dietary changes and treating leaky gut as ways to treat and potentially cure rheumatoid arthritis. Now, these are things that I've actually witnessed in my practice where you'll see the absence of any symptoms and also signs in the blood, like C-reactive protein, rheumatoid factor, and others going down to very low levels and well within all ranges.
Now, once you get those numbers into those ranges, you're always going to be susceptible to that condition. But it would be said to be in remission or possibly could use the term quiescent for the moment.
So it's with this context that I want to share some new research with regard to RA that kind of puts some of the pieces of this puzzle together for us and may give hope to people suffering with RA that there is actually a way to treat this condition in a more permanent way.
So earlier in 2023, there was a study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology, and the study looked at the association between antibodies to a particular type of bacteria called Prevotella copri, and the risk for developing rheumatoid arthritis. This Prevotella copri is a particular type of digestive or gut-related bacteria.The study looked at 2,000 people who were at risk for developing rheumatoid arthritis, 1,000 people who had early rheumatoid arthritis, and 1,000 people who had established rheumatoid arthritis. The researchers measured the level of antibodies to this particular bacteria in the blood of all the participants.
The study found that people who had higher levels of the antibody to the Prevotella copri bacteria were more likely to go on and develop rheumatoid arthritis. In addition, they also found that the levels of antibodies to this bacteria were higher in people who had early rheumatoid arthritis and in people who had established rheumatoid arthritis compared to people who were simply just at risk for developing rheumatoid arthritis.
These findings suggest that Prevotella copri bacteria may play a role in the development of rheumatoid arthritis. Further research is needed to confirm these findings and to determine whether targeting Prevotella copri bacteria could be a potential treatment for rheumatoid arthritis.