Overview
Joint pain can be discomfort, pain or inflammation arising from any part of a joint — including cartilage, bone, ligaments, tendons or muscles. Most commonly, however, joint pain refers to Arthritis or Arthralgia, which is inflammation or pain from within the joint itself.
Joint pain can be mild, causing soreness only after certain activities, or it can be severe, making even limited movement, particularly bearing weight, extremely painful.
Causes
Causes of joint pain include:
- Adult Still’s disease
- Ankylosing spondylitis
- Avascular necrosis (death of bone tissue due to limited blood flow)
- Bone cancer
- Broken bone
- Bursitis (joint inflammation)
- Complex Regional Pain Syndrome (chronic pain due to a dysfunctional nervous system)
- Dislocation
- Fibromyalgia
- Gonococcal arthritis
- Gout (arthritis related to excess uric acid)
- Hypothyroidism (underactive thyroid)
- Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (formerly known as juvenile rheumatoid arthritis)
- Leukemia
- Lupus
- Lyme disease
- Osteoarthritis (disease causing the breakdown of joints)
- Osteomyelitis (a bone infection)
- Paget’s disease of bone
- Polymyalgia rheumatica
- Pseudogout
- Psoriatic arthritis
- Reactive arthritis
- Rheumatic fever
- Rheumatoid Arthritis (inflammatory joint disease)
- Rickets
- Sarcoidosis (collections of inflammatory cells in the body)
- Septic arthritis
- Sprains
- Tendinitis