Joint pain is experienced by many people, and these are mostly harmful and go away with time. However, many types of joint pains require constant medical attention and are long-term. Different kinds of joint pain have different kinds of features and outcomes.
Joint pain is usually a type of discomfort which can arise from any joint. A joint can be painful and inflamed at the same time or can be either. Joint pain can affect only one joint or different joints.
Reasons For Joint Pain
People experiencing joint pain depends on their age and thus children and adults suffer from different kinds of joint pains in different areas of the body. The joint pain may last for a short duration of time or also for a long-term duration depending on the severity. Following are the underlying reasons:
- The bones of the joint or near the joint
- The lining of the joint
- Tendons, ligaments, and muscles that surround a joint
Joint pain also refers to “referred pain” which is caused by pain that is felt across the course of the nerve.
Types Of Joint Pain
👉In Adults Affecting More Than One Joint
- General body infection: This is the common reason for joint pain. In flu-like illness with high temperature, joint pains become painful and may affect all the joints in the body and result in full-body ache.
- Rheumatoid arthritis: People who are having rheumatoid arthritis experience painful and stiff joints in the morning and cause inflammation, swelling of joints, and pain in the joints. The severity of joint pain can be mild to severe.
- Psoriatic arthritis: Joint pain can be experienced by people having skin conditions called psoriasis which results in pain, swelling, and inflammation of the joints.
- Osteoarthritis: This condition is most common in people as it causes wear and tear of the joints and results in joint pain. In this condition, pain starts from one joint usually from the hip or knee and increases with time to other joints in the body.
- Gout: Joint pain caused by gout is severe and also leads to painful inflammation in one or more joints of the body. In this condition, a single joint is affected at first like a big toe, and then may affect other joints.
- Vitamin D deficiency: Due to the deficiency of Vitamin D in the body, joint pain may occur as one of the symptoms.
- Menopause: Women experiencing menopause suffer from joint pain along with other symptoms.
- Connective tissue diseases: These include diseases like scleroderma and systemic lupus erythematosus is also the reason for joint pain in the body.
- Fibromyalgia: This condition also causes joint pain in the body along with tenderness in the whole body.
👉In Adults Affecting Only One Type Of Joint
- Joint and bone infections: Infection of the surrounding bone called osteomyelitis and infection of joints called septic arthritis causes joint pain which usually affects only one joint.
- Problems of soft tissues occurring in certain joints like:
- Ankle: Ankle injury causes joint pain.
- Elbow: Student’s elbow and Tennis Elbow causes joint pain in one area.
- Knee: Knee and Kneecap pain, Meniscus Tears, and Housemaid’s Knee cause pain in one joint around the knee.
- Shoulder: Rotator Cuff Disorders and Frozen Shoulder disease causes pain in one joint.
- Joint, bone, or soft tissue injuries: Injury to the joint like joint dislocation and surrounding muscles can also lead to joint pain in adults.
- Other infections: The other causes of joint pain are several other infections like Lyme Disease.
👉In Children And Teenagers
- Osgood-Schlatter disease: In this disease, knee pain and tenderness are experienced by children, especially sporty teenagers.
- Henoch-Schonlein purpura: This condition causes joint pains, abdominal pains, and skin rash and mainly occurs in children.
- Growing pains: This type of pain is caused usually in the legs, and it is not at all growing. These types of pains are not severe and can settle with time. Growing pains affect the area between the joints.
- Juvenile idiopathic arthritis: In this type of condition, joint inflammation is experienced by children under the age of 16 years.
- Sinding-Larsen Johansson disease: In this disease, teenagers experience pain at the front of the knee. This condition is caused by periods of rapid growth. The disease has symptoms that last for at least one year.