Ankylosing spondylitis is an autoimmune disease in which an the immune system fails to recognize parts of the joints of the spine, the neck and back, as parts of the body so it starts to attack them, so they get inflamed. Symptoms of that inflammation include back pain and neck pain with stiffness especially in the morning when you wake up. There might also be some back pain when you turn in bed at night. Symptoms decrease with movement and sports. Symptoms start at around the age of 20 in many patients. They start very gradually and progress over many months and years.
Painkillers, from a family called NSAIDs, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, help decrease the pain a lot in patients with ankylosing spondylitis. Also sports, physiotherapy and swimming play a very important role in the control of symptoms in ankylosing spondylitis. If those measures are not enough, the available treatment for patients at this point in time is a family of mediations called biologic medications. They belong to a larger medication family called disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs (DMARDs).
Below here, you will find more links about ankylosing spondylitis disease and its symptoms and treatments.
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Links to important videos about ankylosing spondylitis:
Ankylosing spondylitis. Promo of series
Video 1: What is ankylosing spondylitis
Video 2: Prevalence of ankylosing spondylitis
Video 3: How ankylosing spondylitis happens.
Video 4: Symptoms of ankylosing spondylitis
Video 5: Investigations in patients with ankylosing spondylitis
Video 6a: Patients with ankylosing spondylitis can be unlucky sometimes
Video 6b: Patients with ankylosing spondylitis can be unlucky sometimes.
This article was written by Dr. Hatem Eleishi. Dr. Hatem Eleishi is a professor of rheumatology at Cairo university (Egypt) and is especially dedicated to supporting arthritis patients with online educational videos and articles about arthritis causes and treatment. He also runs a rheumatology clinic in Cairo and a center for online medical consultations that, in addition to providing online rheumatology consultations, also provides online medical consultations in several different medical specialties by expert consultants from Egypt, Canada and the United States.
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