National Arthritis Awareness Month

Arthritis Types

Arthritis means inflammation or swelling of one or more joints. It describes more than 100 conditions that affect the joints, tissues around the joint, and other connective tissues. Specific symptoms vary depending on the type of arthritis, but usually include joint pain and stiffness.

Gout

Gout is a common form of inflammatory arthritis that is very painful. It usually affects one joint at a time (often the big toe joint). There are times when symptoms get worse, known as flares, and times when there are no symptoms, known as remission.

Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia (fi·bro·my·al·gi·a) is a condition that causes pain all over the body (also referred to as widespread pain), sleep problems, fatigue, and often emotional and mental distress.

Childhood Arthritis

The most common type of childhood arthritis is juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). It can cause permanent physical damage to joints, which can result in disability.

Joint Pain and Arthritis

Chronic pain caused by arthritis affects millions of people in the United States every year. About one in four adults with arthritis—15 million people—report experiencing severe joint pain related to arthritis.1 Additionally, nearly half of adults with arthritis have persistent pain.2

Children with arthritis have pain as well, but there is less population-based information about them.

Learn about arthritis-related severe joint pain in the United States, and recommended pain management strategies that can help people with arthritis control their pain.

CDC’s Efforts to Reduce Arthritis Pain

CDC supports programs for people with arthritis so they can work and do other daily activities, have less pain, manage their own care, and prevent or delay disability.

CDC research related to pain includes:

Studies examining how adults with arthritis prefer to manage their pain.
Analyses of the effectiveness of community-based programs in reducing pain and improving quality of life.

The combined efforts and partnerships of CDC’s funded programs have made proven arthritis-appropriate self-management education workshops and physical activity intervention programs available to more than 200,000 adults in 48 states, the District of Columbia, and one territory—American Samoa. Learn more about the reach of CDC-funded Programs.

Arthritis Data and Statistics

State Statistics

The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is the best source for state-specific arthritis prevalence estimates. BRFSS is a state-based, random-digit-dialed telephone survey of the noninstitutionalized, civilian US population.

Cost Statistics

Arthritis has a profound economic, personal, and societal impact in the United States. In 2013, the total national arthritis-attributable medical care costs and earnings losses among adults with arthritis were $303.5 billion.

Lifestyle Management Programs

The CDC Arthritis Program promotes recognized, evidence-based programs that are proven to improve the quality of life of adults with arthritis and helps make them available in communities across the country. Recognized programs are those that have shown improvements in arthritis symptoms, such as pain or limitations in function, and that have some level of support for program oversight and organized, wide-scale delivery. Promising programs are programs with promising evaluation data and which are building the infrastructure to support program delivery across the country. Over time, these programs may be elevated to a recognized status.