Currency and diagnostic criteria of rheumatoid arthritis in patients of senior age groups

This article presents the results of the study of the peculiarities of the course and diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in elderly people. In our work we studied 56 RA patients. Of these, 25 (44.6%) of the patients first fell ill in old age, 16 (28.5%) of patients became ill for more than 15 years and 15 (26.7%) of patients younger than 45 years made up a control group. In the elderly, according to some authors, the onset of RA is often characterized by a low degree of activity of the inflammatory process, which, in retrospective evaluation, is classified as a "chronic" course of the disease. A major achievement was the creation and implementation in the clinical practice of RA treatment of so-called biological agents of medical preparations obtained by genetic engineering, the targets for which are key pro-inflammatory cytokines, their receptors and immunocompetent cells. In the elderly at the beginning of the disease, an important diagnostic sign "morning stiffness" manifests itself after 3–4 months and even a year from the onset of the disease.