Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Symptoms
By Mayo Clinic staffSigns and symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis may include:
- Joint pain
- Joint swelling
- Joints that are tender to the touch
- Red and puffy hands
- Firm bumps of tissue under the skin on your arms (rheumatoid nodules)
- Fatigue
- Morning stiffness that may last for hours
- Fever
- Weight loss
Smaller joints affected first
Early rheumatoid arthritis tends to affect your smaller joints first — the joints in your wrists, hands, ankles and feet. As the disease progresses, your shoulders, elbows, knees, hips, jaw and neck also can become involved. In most cases, symptoms occur symmetrically — in the same joints on both sides of your body.
Symptoms may come and go
Rheumatoid arthritis signs and symptoms may vary in severity and may even come and go. Periods of increased disease activity — called flare-ups or flares — alternate with periods of relative remission, during which the swelling, pain, difficulty sleeping and weakness fade or disappear.
When to see a doctor
Make an appointment with your doctor if you have persistent discomfort and swelling in multiple joints on both sides of your body.
- Rheumatoid arthritis. American College of Rheumatology. http://www.rheumatology.org/public/factsheets/diseases_and_conditions/ra.asp?aud=pat. Accessed Aug. 25, 2009.
- O'Dell JR. Rheumatoid arthritis. In: Goldman L, et al. Cecil Medicine. 23rd ed. Philadelphia, Pa.: Saunders Elsevier; 2007. http://www.mdconsult.com/das/book/body/156141423-3/0/1492/1022.html#4-u1.0-B978-1-4160-2805-5..50290-1_12843. Accessed Aug. 25, 2009.
- Handout on health: Rheumatoid arthritis. National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Rheumatic_Disease/default.asp. Accessed Aug. 25, 2009.
- Hunder GG. Mayo Clinic Straight Talk on Arthritis. Rochester, Minn.: Mayo Foundation for Medical Education and Research; 2006.
- Rheumatoid arthritis and complementary and alternative medicine. National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. http://nccam.nih.gov/health/RA/. Accessed Aug. 26, 2009.
