Dr. Ruderman shares why women get arthritis more often than men.
Dr. Ruderman:
It’s a great question and we do not know the answer to that. We do know that many, perhaps most kinds of arthritis are more common in women than men. A lot of the types of inflammatory arthritis which have an immune basis seem to be more common in women and women seem to be more prone to autoimmune diseases than men do.
Some people think it is hormonal related. It may actually be genetic. There are different genes on the X chromosome versus the Y chromosome that may have some input but the bottom line is we do not entirely understand that. For degenerative arthritis that is often more common in women than men as well and again, we think there may be a hormonal component to it but there also may be just differences in the tissue in the joints in women versus men that make it more prone to wearing out over time.
About Dr. Ruderman, M.D.:
Dr. Eric M. Ruderman, M.D., is associate professor in the division of rheumatology at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois. He is also a board member of the Arthritis Foundation of Greater Chicago.
Dr. Ruderman graduated from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University in New York, New York. He completed his residence at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania and his fellowship training in rheumatology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts.