Can anyone explain erosion to me other than what I have googled!! Where does it lead to??
Hand MRI last month, BAD erosion (no, I don't have the score yet). I see my rheumy Thurs, and we will discuss more aggressive treatment. (he looked at the mri screen and said 'wow, that's a big hole!')
I know it is caused by inflammation but refuse predsidone. I take peroxicam(Feldene) for inflam. Is Celebrex better??
I had a bone scan last month, also, and it was VERY good!! Improvement over last year. I had osteopenia before, been on Fosamax about 7 yrs. Now I take one once a month and can go off soon!! Yeah!! but it seems like bone loss and erosion would go hand and hand...?
Any help explaining erosion would be appreciated.
You could try taking very high doses of fish body oil for inflammation. It needs to be enough to equal 3000mg of EPA/DHA a day, and it takes at least 3 months to kick in but gets more effective for up to a year. Seriously. There's been lots of studies on it. But please don't use oil derived from the livers of fish because at such large quantities you will OD on vitamin A.
You don't necessarily need prednisone to stop the erosion or the inflammation. Fish oil like Gimpy said is good for inflammation. Just be sure to check with your doc before starting anything either prescription or OTC.
Celebrex and Feldene are both classifieds as NSAIDS. Whether one works better than the other I have no clue. They may work differently within the body tho. As far as your doc saying more aggressive treatment, I don't think he is talking about just switching your nsaid to a different one. I think he might be talking about starting a dmard or biologic. But this is just how I take his statement to mean. He seemed kind of shocked and surprised at the amount of damage done.
I am not sure about the bone loss and erosion question that you have. But I will try and find something about it for you. There might be other people that can answer that question for you here. I can say for me, I have no osteopenia or osteoporosis but I have damage from the RA.
Edit to this post: I went and did some quick research on this. The causes of osteoporosis and osteopenia vs ra are different. Osteoporosis and penia are caused by a demineralization of the bones. The ra is a erosion of the bones due to the immune system attacking the bones and loss of synovial fluid. The inflammation that comes with ra causes a lot of the erosion which is why so much emphasis is placed on controlling it. Ra is also involved with our T-cells not working properly. The focus on treating the osteoporosis or penia is to put back the minerals etc that we are losing due to the disease. It also has to do with bone density. From what I read about osteoporosis and penia it is not an auto immune disease like ra is.
So, we have 2 different types of bone loss that occur more in women than they do in men. Also different types of bone loss with 2 different causes. Does that mean they can't go hand in hand? Not too sure. Can we have both at once? Sure can since they are 2 totally different things. Does having ra mean that the osteoporosis can do more damage and take longer to replace those minerals we lost? I feel it can since we have bone erosion process going already.
That was a really awesome question!!!
Bonny,
You are exactly right. With erosion the edges of the joint look jagged.
PJ
All,
Tks so much for your comments. It was a great help. This gives me new things to research.
Yes, I believe doc will suggest Humira or such tomorrow at my appointment.
Tks, again.
Oh,BTW....I do take omega3's (fishoil) but not that high of a dose.I don't know too many doctors that order MRI's as just a baseline. That's a very expensive test and rarely to they order them too quickly.
In my case I'm happy about that because everytime I've had one I've come out of pocket close to 00 due to my deductable. Whenever they have been suggested I say "Is that really nessesary?" Your insurance is likely different than mine and if you don't have to pay a lot out of pocket you can always request it....but they might refuse.
X-rays provide a good baseline for future use.
There have been multiple studies done on fish oil that show the dose needs