Rheumatology 2000; 39: 117-119
© 2000 British Society for Rheumatology
Editorial |
Managing reactive arthritis
Department of Medicine, Turku University, FIN-20520 Turku, Finland
Reactive arthritis (ReA) is an infectious disease. A healthy but genetically predisposed individual develops it after a suitable triggering infection. Most commonly the initial infection has affected the digestive or the urogenital tract and the terms enteroarthritis or uroarthritis are used, respectively. However, the list of microbes able to trigger ReA is long, and the primary infection may also affect other organs [1]. In spite of intensive research, the pathogenetical process is not yet understood. However, during the period from contracting the initial infection, an incubation time, the primary illness and the following interval period before onset of ReA critical immune reactions are thought to take place. The fact that several quite different microbes lead to a similar clinical entity demonstrates that the classical Koch's postulates do not apply in this instance. As always, when the pathogenesis of a disease is not understood, there exists no definite curative treatment.
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