Arthropathy: What the Word Covers and How Joint Disease Is Classified

The word usually arrives on a piece of paper. You pick up an MRI report or a visit summary, scan past the anatomy, and there it is: “facet arthropathy at L4-L5” or “degenerative arthropathy of the right knee.” Nobody said it out loud in the exam room, yet now it sits in your chart looking permanent and vaguely ominous.

Here is the reassuring part: the term is far less specific than it sounds. It is a category, not a verdict—closer to “lung condition” than to a diagnosis with a fixed future. What actually matters is which kind you have, because a worn spinal joint, a gout flare, and an autoimmune attack on the knuckles are three different stories with three different playbooks.

This guide unpacks what the word covers, how physicians sort joint disease into families, and which details on a report deserve your attention—grounded in mainstream medical evidence rather than the scarier corners of the internet.

What Does Arthropathy Actually Mean?

Break the word apart and it becomes almost friendly. Arthron is Greek for joint; pathos means disease or suffering. Arthropathy, then, is simply “disease of a joint”—any joint, any cause. A rugby knee ground down over decades, a big toe seized by crystals at 3 a.m., a shoulder invaded by bacteria: all arthropathies.

That breadth explains why the term shows up constantly in medical records but rarely in conversation. Radiologists and billing systems favor it precisely because it commits to nothing beyond “something is wrong with this joint.” Your physician, by contrast, wants the next level of detail—the mechanism—before deciding what to do.

Think of it the way you would think of “heart disease.” That phrase covers a blocked artery, a leaky valve, and a rhythm problem, three conditions with little in common beyond an address. Arthropathy works the same way. According to MedlinePlus, there are more than 100 recognized conditions affecting joints and the tissues around them, and they range from mild and self-limited to destructive and systemic.

So when the word appears on your report, the honest translation is: “this joint shows disease or damage; the type and significance depend on everything else in your picture.” The rest of this article is about that everything else.

Arthropathy vs. Arthritis: Is There a Real Difference?

Technically, yes—and the suffix does the work. The “-itis” in arthritis means inflammation, so arthritis strictly refers to joint disease in which inflammation is a defining feature. Arthropathy is the wider circle: every arthritis is an arthropathy, but an arthropathy caused purely by mechanical damage, nerve loss, or bleeding into a joint is not, in the strictest sense, arthritis.

In everyday practice, the line blurs. The Cleveland Clinic and most clinicians use “arthritis” loosely for nearly any painful joint condition, and even osteoarthritis—long described as simple wear—carries the inflammatory suffix. That naming turns out to be half-right: research over the past two decades shows low-grade inflammation does participate in osteoarthritis, even though it is not the driving force it is in rheumatoid disease.

Why should a reader care about a semantic distinction? Because the inflammatory-versus-mechanical question is the single most useful fork in the road when sorting out a painful joint. Inflammatory arthropathies tend to announce themselves with prolonged morning stiffness, visible swelling, warmth, and fatigue; mechanical ones tend to hurt with use and settle with rest. Those two patterns lead to different tests, different specialists, and different urgency.

Scale matters here, too. The Mayo Clinic notes that arthritis in its many forms is among the most common chronic conditions in the United States, affecting tens of millions of adults—so the odds that an “arthropathy” on your chart is one of the familiar, well-understood types are high.

How Doctors Classify Joint Disease

Rheumatologists rarely start with a disease name. They start with a set of sorting questions, and each answer narrows the field dramatically.

• Inflammatory or not? Warmth, swelling, morning stiffness lasting over an hour, and elevated inflammation markers on blood tests point one way; pain that tracks with activity and eases within about 30 minutes of waking points the other.
• How many joints? One joint (monoarthropathy) raises different suspects—infection, crystals, injury—than five or more (polyarthropathy), which suggests a systemic process.
• Which joints, in what pattern? Symmetric small joints of the hands lean toward rheumatoid disease. The base of the big toe leans toward gout. The spine and sacroiliac joints in a younger adult suggest an axial inflammatory condition. Weight-bearing knees and hips in later life suggest degeneration.
• How fast did it arrive? Hours-to-days is acute and demands quicker answers; months-to-years is chronic and allows a more measured workup.
• Primary or secondary? Some arthropathy is the main event; some is a downstream effect of another condition, such as psoriasis, inflammatory bowel disease, a bleeding disorder, or diabetes-related nerve damage.

The elegance of this framework is that it works before a single scan is ordered. A careful history plus a hands-on exam sorts most joint problems into the right family, which is why the conversation portion of a visit matters at least as much as imaging. The categories below are the families that questioning reveals.

The Main Types of Arthropathy at a Glance

Every classification scheme simplifies, but this one has earned its keep in clinics for decades. Six broad families cover the overwhelming majority of joint disease you will encounter on a report or in a conversation with a physician.

Family	What is happening in the joint	Familiar examples	Typical calling card
Degenerative	Cartilage wears down faster than the body repairs it; bone remodels underneath	Osteoarthritis, facet arthropathy of the spine	Pain with use, brief morning stiffness, gradual onset over years
Inflammatory (autoimmune)	The immune system attacks the joint lining, eroding cartilage and bone	Rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis	Morning stiffness over an hour, symmetric swelling, fatigue
Crystal	Mineral crystals deposit in the joint and trigger intense inflammation	Gout, calcium pyrophosphate (pseudogout)	Sudden, severe attacks—often the big toe, knee, or wrist
Infectious (septic)	Bacteria or other microbes multiply inside the joint space	Septic arthritis	One hot, swollen, intensely painful joint, often with fever
Neuropathic	Lost protective sensation lets repeated unnoticed injury destroy the joint	Charcot joint, most often in the foot with diabetes-related nerve damage	Warm, swollen, progressively misshapen joint with surprisingly little pain
Systemic and hemorrhagic	Another disease damages the joint—repeated bleeding, iron overload, hormonal disorders	Hemophilic arthropathy, hemochromatosis arthropathy	Joint damage arriving alongside a known body-wide condition

A single person can hold membership in more than one family—longstanding gout, for instance, can accelerate degenerative change. But identifying the dominant process is what shapes treatment, which is why each family deserves a closer look.

Degenerative Arthropathy: When Cartilage Wears Faster Than It Repairs

This is the family most people will eventually meet. Degenerative arthropathy—osteoarthritis being its household name—is the most common joint disease worldwide, and in the United States it affects tens of millions of adults, concentrated in knees, hips, hands, and spine.

The old phrase “wear and tear” undersells what actually happens. Cartilage is living tissue that constantly breaks down and rebuilds; osteoarthritis develops when breakdown outpaces repair over years. As the NHS describes it, the whole joint participates: cartilage thins, the bone beneath thickens and grows small spurs, the joint lining can become mildly inflamed, and surrounding muscles weaken. It is a slow renovation gone wrong, not a tire balding on a rim.

The forces involved help explain the pattern. With each step, a knee handles a load several times body weight—which is why prior knee injury, physically demanding work, and carrying extra body weight are among the strongest modifiable risk factors, and why age remains the strongest fixed one. Genetics contributes too; hand osteoarthritis in particular runs in families.

Two honest caveats deserve space. First, the match between X-ray findings and pain is loose: many people with visibly worn joints feel fine, and some with mild imaging changes hurt considerably. Second, degeneration is not destiny in one direction—evidence consistently shows that strengthening the muscles around an affected joint reduces pain and improves function, which is the opposite of what the “worn out machine” metaphor would predict. Joints respond to sensible loading; they do not simply erode.

Inflammatory Arthropathy: When the Immune System Targets the Joint

Here the problem is not mechanics but mistaken identity. In rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, and related conditions, the immune system treats the synovium—the thin membrane lining the joint—as a threat. The lining thickens, inflammatory cells pour in, and over time the process can erode cartilage and bone. Untreated, that erosion is what deforms joints.

The clinical signature differs from degeneration in ways worth memorizing. Stiffness dominates mornings and can last well over an hour. Swelling is soft and warm rather than bony. Small joints of the hands and feet are often involved on both sides symmetrically. Fatigue, low-grade fevers, and effects beyond the joints—skin, eyes, tendons—are common, because these are body-wide diseases that happen to favor joints as a battleground.

Timing is the part that carries real stakes. Evidence summarized by the Mayo Clinic and rheumatology guidelines worldwide supports early diagnosis and early disease-modifying treatment: joint erosion that has not yet occurred can often be prevented, while erosion that has occurred cannot be undone. The window matters most in the first months of symptoms.

That is why persistent swelling in several small joints, especially with prolonged morning stiffness, deserves prompt medical attention rather than a wait-and-see year. Modern management has changed the trajectory of these diseases substantially—many people diagnosed today can expect to protect their joints in ways that were not possible a generation ago—but the benefit is largest when treatment starts early.

Crystal Arthropathy: Gout and Its Quieter Cousin

Few joint problems announce themselves as theatrically as gout. The classic attack begins overnight: a big toe, ankle, or knee becomes red, swollen, and so exquisitely tender that the weight of a bedsheet hurts. The culprit is uric acid, a normal waste product that, at high blood levels, can crystallize inside a joint. The immune system responds to those needle-shaped crystals as it would to an invader, producing intense but usually temporary inflammation. MedlinePlus notes that gout most often strikes the big toe first and tends to flare episodically, with quiet stretches in between.

Gout has a quieter cousin: calcium pyrophosphate deposition, often called pseudogout. Different crystal, similar drama—typically in the knees or wrists of older adults, sometimes mimicking either gout or a sudden flare of osteoarthritis.

Two points about crystal disease deserve emphasis. First, diagnosis can be made with unusual certainty: drawing fluid from the joint and identifying crystals under a microscope settles the question in a way no blood test or scan can. Second, gout is one of the most manageable chronic arthropathies. Lowering uric acid over the long term, under medical supervision, can prevent attacks and stop the joint damage that repeated flares cause. Dietary factors—alcohol, sugary drinks, and certain rich foods—can nudge risk, but the evidence is clear that genetics and kidney handling of uric acid do most of the driving, so a flare is not a character flaw.

Infectious Arthropathy: The One Joint Problem That Cannot Wait

Every other condition in this article allows time for a considered workup. Septic arthritis does not. When bacteria reach the inside of a joint—usually through the bloodstream, occasionally through a wound, injection, or surgery—they multiply in the joint fluid, and the resulting inflammation can begin destroying cartilage within days.

The picture is usually unmistakable in hindsight: one joint, most often a knee, becomes hot, swollen, and severely painful over hours to a couple of days, frequently with fever and a strong reluctance to move the joint at all. The NHS classifies this presentation as an emergency requiring same-day hospital assessment, because outcomes depend heavily on how quickly the joint is drained and antimicrobial treatment begins.

Certain circumstances raise the risk and should lower the threshold for seeking urgent care: an artificial joint, a recent joint injection or surgery, a skin infection near a joint, diabetes, or any condition or treatment that suppresses the immune system. In people with an existing arthropathy, a flare that feels categorically different—hotter, faster, accompanied by feeling unwell all over—should be treated as possible infection until proven otherwise.

The diagnostic move is the same one used for crystals: a needle draws fluid from the joint, and the laboratory looks for organisms. It is a quick procedure, and in this scenario it can be joint-saving. If there is one fact from this article worth filing away permanently, it is this: a single hot, swollen joint plus fever equals same-day medical care.

Neuropathic Arthropathy: When Nerves Stop Protecting the Joint

Pain gets a bad reputation, but it performs an essential service: it tells you to stop loading an injured joint. Neuropathic arthropathy—often called a Charcot joint—shows what happens when that alarm system fails.

The usual setting is longstanding diabetes with nerve damage in the feet, though other causes of sensory loss can produce the same result. Without protective sensation, small injuries go unnoticed and unrested. Micro-fractures accumulate, ligaments loosen, and the architecture of the foot or ankle gradually collapses—all while producing far less pain than the visible damage would suggest. The early stage is deceptively bland: a foot that is warm, swollen, and perhaps a little red, easily mistaken for a sprain or infection.

That early stage is precisely when intervention matters most. The cornerstone of management is offloading—protecting the joint from weight-bearing, often with specialized casting or footwear—to let bone quiet down before deformity becomes fixed. Caught late, Charcot changes can create pressure points that lead to skin breakdown, which is why this condition sits high on the worry list of every diabetes care team.

The practical lesson extends beyond this one diagnosis. For anyone with reduced sensation in the feet, a new area of warmth, swelling, or shape change deserves prompt evaluation even when it barely hurts. In neuropathic disease, the absence of pain is not reassurance; it is the problem itself.

What Is L4-L5 Arthropathy? Decoding Facet Arthropathy on a Spine Report

This phrase sends more people to a search engine than perhaps any other use of the word, so it deserves careful unpacking. Your spine is not a single column but a stack of joints. At every level, in addition to the disc at the front, a pair of small joints called facet joints connects the back portions of neighboring vertebrae. They guide and limit motion the way hinges guide a door.

“L4-L5 arthropathy” means the facet joints between your fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae show degenerative change—thinned cartilage, bony overgrowth, sometimes small cysts. It is the spinal edition of the same degenerative process described earlier, and L4-L5 and L5-S1 are its favorite addresses because the lowest lumbar levels handle the greatest share of bending, twisting, and load.

Now the part reports rarely say out loud: these findings are extraordinarily common with age and correlate only loosely with pain. Imaging studies of adults without any back pain routinely reveal degenerative changes, including facet arthropathy. A radiologist describes what is visible; whether that finding explains your symptoms is a separate clinical judgment.

When facet arthropathy does cause symptoms, the pattern tends to be a localized ache in the lower back, sometimes radiating into the buttock or upper thigh, worse with standing, arching backward, or twisting, and often eased by sitting or leaning forward. Contrast that with disc-related nerve compression, which more typically shoots pain below the knee. The distinction matters because management differs—and because a two-word imaging phrase should never be allowed to feel like a life sentence when, statistically, it is closer to gray hair for the spine.

When Joint Disease Is a Clue to Something Else

Some arthropathies are less a disease of the joint than a message from elsewhere in the body, and physicians treat them as diagnostic clues.

Hemophilic arthropathy is the clearest example. In bleeding disorders, repeated bleeding into a joint—most often knees, elbows, and ankles—leaves iron-rich blood in the joint space, which inflames the lining and, over years, degrades cartilage. Modern preventive treatment of the underlying disorder has made severe joint damage far less common than it once was, a genuine success story of hematology.

Iron tells a different version of the same tale in hereditary hemochromatosis, a condition of iron overload. Its signature arthropathy affects the knuckles at the base of the index and middle fingers—an unusual location for ordinary osteoarthritis—and a sharp-eyed clinician sometimes diagnoses the whole condition from that pattern alone.

The list continues. Psoriasis precedes or accompanies psoriatic arthritis in a substantial share of people with the skin condition. Inflammatory bowel disease can bring its own arthropathy, in limbs or spine, that flares and settles with the gut. Thyroid and parathyroid disorders, and diabetes beyond its neuropathic effects, can each alter joint tissues.

The takeaway for a reader is not to memorize the catalog but to appreciate the principle: when you see a physician about joints, expect questions about your skin, digestion, family history, and general health. Those questions are not padding. Joints are one of the body’s most reliable messengers, and a good clinician reads the message before treating the messenger.

What Symptoms Point to Arthropathy?

Joint disease speaks a fairly small vocabulary; the diagnostic art lies in the grammar—when symptoms occur, how they combine, and how they evolve.

The core signals are pain, stiffness, swelling, warmth, redness, reduced range of motion, and sometimes grinding, catching, or a sense of instability. Any one of them, in isolation and briefly, means little; healthy joints complain occasionally. Patterns are what carry information.

• Stiffness timing: morning stiffness easing within about 30 minutes suggests a degenerative process; stiffness lasting an hour or more suggests inflammation.
• Pain timing: pain that builds with activity and settles with rest leans mechanical; pain that is present at rest, wakes you at night, or improves with gentle movement leans inflammatory.
• Swelling character: bony, hard enlargement develops slowly in degeneration; soft, warm, squeezable swelling points to inflamed lining or fluid.
• Speed: agony arriving over hours suggests crystals or infection; a slow burn over years suggests wear.
• Company: fatigue, rashes, eye inflammation, fevers, or digestive symptoms traveling with joint pain shift suspicion toward systemic disease.

One underappreciated point: severity of pain is a poor guide to severity of disease. Gout can be excruciating yet leave a joint intact if treated; a Charcot joint can crumble almost painlessly; early rheumatoid disease can feel like mere stiffness while erosion begins. Judge joint symptoms by their pattern and persistence, not by how loudly they shout on any given day.

How Is Arthropathy Diagnosed?

Expect the workup to feel like detective work in three acts, and expect the first act to matter most.

Act one is conversation and examination. Which joints, for how long, with what stiffness pattern, after what injuries, alongside what other symptoms, in a family with what history—these questions, plus a hands-on exam checking warmth, swelling, tenderness, and range of motion, sort most cases into the right family before any test is ordered.

Act two is targeted testing. Blood work can measure inflammation markers, look for the autoantibodies associated with rheumatoid and related diseases, and check uric acid—though a normal uric acid level during a flare does not rule out gout, a nuance worth knowing. Imaging usually starts with plain X-rays, which show joint-space narrowing, bone spurs, and erosions well and cheaply. MRI and ultrasound add soft-tissue detail when the picture is unclear. The Mayo Clinic outlines this laboratory-plus-imaging approach as the standard path.

Act three, when needed, is the tiebreaker: joint aspiration. Drawing fluid from a swollen joint and examining it under a microscope can identify infection or crystals with a certainty no scan can match, and it distinguishes inflammatory from non-inflammatory fluid directly.

A final calibration for readers of their own reports: tests describe; clinicians interpret. Degenerative findings on imaging are near-universal with age, and mild blood-test abnormalities occur in healthy people. A diagnosis is the intersection of story, exam, and results—never a single line on a printout.

How Do You Treat Arthropathy?

There is no single treatment, because there is no single disease—but the logic is consistent: identify the family, address the mechanism, protect the joint’s function.

For degenerative arthropathy, the strongest evidence belongs to the least glamorous measures. Structured exercise that strengthens the muscles around an affected joint reliably reduces pain and improves function in clinical trials—the NHS lists it as a core treatment, not an optional extra. Weight management meaningfully unloads knees and hips. Physical and occupational therapy, supportive footwear, heat and cold, and activity pacing round out the foundation. Medicines that ease pain or calm inflammation have a role, chosen and monitored by a clinician for your specific situation. For advanced disease, joint replacement is among the most successful operations in modern surgery.

Inflammatory arthropathies follow a different playbook: disease-modifying treatment aimed at the immune process itself, started early, with the explicit goal of preventing erosion rather than merely masking pain. Crystal disease adds long-term strategies to lower uric acid and prevent future attacks. Septic arthritis is treated in the hospital with joint drainage and antimicrobial therapy, urgently. Neuropathic joints need protection and offloading; arthropathies secondary to other diseases improve most when the underlying condition is controlled.

Honesty requires one more sentence: most chronic arthropathies are managed rather than cured. That is less discouraging than it sounds. Managed well—especially with early diagnosis, consistent movement, and treatment matched to mechanism—the realistic goal for most people is a joint that works, hurts less, and lasts.

When to See a Doctor About Joint Symptoms

Most joint aches earn a few days of patience. Some do not, and knowing the difference is worth more than any other paragraph in this article.

Seek same-day care for any of the following:

• A single joint that is hot, swollen, and severely painful—especially with fever, chills, or feeling generally unwell. This is the septic arthritis pattern, and the NHS treats it as an emergency.
• Joint symptoms after a deep wound, bite, or recent injection or surgery near the joint.
• Sudden inability to bear weight or move a joint, or a joint that looks visibly deformed after injury.
• In anyone with reduced foot sensation, a newly warm, swollen, or changing foot—even without much pain.

Book a routine appointment soon if you notice morning stiffness lasting beyond 30 to 60 minutes for more than a couple of weeks; swelling in one or more joints persisting past a few days; joint pain traveling with rash, eye inflammation, digestive symptoms, or unexplained weight loss; recurrent sudden attacks in the same joint; or pain that steadily limits what you can do despite rest and self-care.

And a gentler prompt: if joint symptoms are quietly shrinking your life—stairs avoided, walks shortened, hobbies shelved—that alone justifies a visit. Early evaluation is when the widest range of options is still on the table, whatever family of arthropathy turns out to be responsible.

Frequently asked questions

What is the difference between arthritis and arthropathy?

Arthropathy is the broader term: it means any disease of a joint, from any cause. Arthritis specifically means joint disease involving inflammation—the “-itis” suffix. Every arthritis is therefore an arthropathy, but joint damage caused purely by mechanics, nerve loss, or bleeding is arthropathy without being arthritis in the strict sense. In everyday clinical conversation, the two words are often used interchangeably, and the distinction rarely changes your care.

What is arthropathy?

Arthropathy is the umbrella medical term for any disease or disorder of a joint. It covers degenerative wear such as osteoarthritis, autoimmune inflammation such as rheumatoid arthritis, crystal conditions such as gout, joint infections, nerve-related joint damage, and joint problems caused by other diseases like bleeding disorders. The word itself does not identify a cause—it simply flags that a joint shows disease, with the specific type determined by examination and testing.

What is L4-L5 arthropathy?

It means the small facet joints connecting your fourth and fifth lumbar vertebrae show degenerative change—thinned cartilage and bony overgrowth. L4-L5 is a common site because the lowest lumbar levels carry the most bending and twisting load. Importantly, this finding appears frequently on scans of people with no back pain, so it does not automatically explain symptoms. When it does cause pain, the typical pattern is a low-back ache worse with standing or arching backward.

How do you treat arthropathy?

Treatment depends entirely on the type. Degenerative disease responds best to strengthening exercise, weight management, physical therapy, and, when advanced, joint replacement surgery. Autoimmune types need early disease-modifying treatment aimed at the immune process. Gout is managed by lowering uric acid long term. Joint infections require urgent hospital drainage and antimicrobial treatment. Most chronic arthropathies are managed rather than cured, but matched to the right mechanism, treatment usually preserves function and reduces pain substantially.

Is arthropathy serious?

It ranges from trivial to urgent, because the word covers everything from mild age-related wear to joint-destroying infection. Many arthropathies noted on imaging cause no symptoms and need no treatment. Others—septic arthritis, rapidly progressive autoimmune disease, or a developing Charcot joint—require prompt care to prevent permanent damage. The seriousness lies in the specific diagnosis, not the umbrella term, which is why a hot swollen joint with fever warrants same-day evaluation while gradual stiffness usually allows a routine appointment.

Is degenerative arthropathy the same as osteoarthritis?

Largely, yes. Osteoarthritis is the most common form of degenerative arthropathy, and clinicians often use the terms interchangeably. Both describe a process in which cartilage breaks down faster than the body repairs it, with bone remodeling underneath. “Degenerative arthropathy” is slightly broader and often appears on imaging reports—for instance, describing worn facet joints in the spine—while “osteoarthritis” is the formal diagnosis applied to knees, hips, hands, and other joints.

Can arthropathy be reversed or cured?

Most chronic forms cannot be reversed, but their course can often be changed dramatically. Cartilage already lost does not regrow, and autoimmune erosion cannot be undone—yet early treatment can prevent damage that has not yet happened. Gout attacks can be largely eliminated with long-term uric acid control, infections can be cured outright with prompt treatment, and exercise measurably improves pain and function in degenerative disease. The realistic goal is a joint that works well, not a joint restored to age twenty.

What is facet arthropathy?

Facet arthropathy is degenerative change in the facet joints—the paired small joints at the back of the spine that connect each vertebra to its neighbors and guide movement. Cartilage in these joints thins and bone spurs form, most often at the lower lumbar levels that bear the greatest load. It is extremely common with age and often symptomless. When painful, it typically causes localized back ache worsened by standing, extension, or twisting, and eased by sitting.

What causes arthropathy?

Causes fall into a handful of mechanisms: mechanical wear outpacing repair (osteoarthritis), the immune system attacking the joint lining (rheumatoid and related diseases), crystals depositing in joint fluid (gout, pseudogout), microbes infecting the joint space (septic arthritis), lost protective sensation allowing unnoticed injury (Charcot joint), and other diseases damaging joints secondarily—bleeding disorders, iron overload, psoriasis, and inflammatory bowel disease among them. Age, genetics, prior injury, and body weight influence risk across several categories.

What tests diagnose arthropathy?

Diagnosis starts with history and physical examination, which sort most cases into the correct category. Blood tests then measure inflammation markers, autoantibodies, and uric acid as needed. X-rays show joint-space narrowing, spurs, and erosions; MRI and ultrasound add soft-tissue detail. The most definitive single test is joint aspiration—drawing fluid from a swollen joint—because microscopic examination can positively identify infection or crystals and directly distinguish inflammatory from non-inflammatory disease.

References

• MedlinePlus – Arthritis
• NHS – Osteoarthritis
• NHS – Septic Arthritis
• Cleveland Clinic – Arthritis

This article is for general information only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice. Please consult a qualified doctor about your individual situation.