The term “rheumatism” refers to an extremely wide and varied group of disorders comprising more than one hundred rheumatic diseases that are very diverse in terms of causes, symptoms and complications, mainly affecting the musculoskeletal system (joints, bones, tendons, ligaments, joint capsules, muscles, etc.), but can also affect other organs and tissues, such as the heart, blood vessels, lungs, kidneys, skin, intestines, eyes, etc.
Depending on the parts of the body mainly affected, rheumatism is distinguished into “articular” and “extra-articular” (although rheumatic diseases often damage multiple structures and tissues simultaneously, with different levels of severity), while in relation to the mechanism of onset, “inflammatory” and “degenerative” rheumatic forms are recognized.
In addition, there are numerous rheumatic diseases related to endocrine-metabolic alterations, hereditary connective tissue diseases, neoplasms, neurological and neurovascular diseases, sarcoidosis, or some blood diseases.
Inflammatory rheumatic diseases mainly affect women (affected 2-3 times more than men, probably due to hormonal reasons), while age increases the likelihood of being affected by degenerative rheumatic diseases (in particular, osteoarthritis); fairly rare inflammatory rheumatic diseases, for example, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oRBJPxzvro – Source: HUMANITAS Research Hospital) and Behçet’s syndrome, can also occur in children and young adults.
