By Paul Simao
ATLANTA (Reuters)
- The number of Americans suffering from arthritis is expected
to rise by about 40 percent to 60 million by 2020, creating the
potential for a ``huge'' public health problem for an aging nation,
federal experts said on Thursday.
The Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention said arthritis had been growing
at a rate of about 750,000 cases a year since 1990 and would,
according to current projections, afflict about 18 percent of
the U.S. population by 2020.
Arthritis,
a musculoskeletal disease that causes painful inflammation in
the joints, is the leading cause of disability in the United States
and a major financial drain on the nation's health care system.
Officials
with the Atlanta-based CDC noted that the worrying trend reflected
in part the country's aging population. Health experts have also
pointed to poor diet, lack of exercise, and obesity as factors
in rising arthritis rates.
An estimated
43 million people, or about 16 percent of the U.S. population,
were believed to have arthritis in 1997, according to a national
study by the CDC.
``I think
the projections indicate a huge public health problem down the
road,'' said Dr. Jeffrey Sacks, an epidemiologist with the CDC's
National Chronic Disease Prevention & Health Promotion division.
``It is going
to have dramatic consequences in terms of not only disability
in this country but also health-care expenditures,'' Sacks said.
The study,
based on a random sample of 36,057 people in 1994 and 1995, indicated
that almost 8 million people had forms of arthritis that limited
regular activity to some degree.
That figure
was expected to rise to 11.6 million by 2020.
The CDC study
found that arthritis rates, as in past years, tended to increase
with age and that females had a higher prevalence of the disease.
The agency said it was moving ahead with programs to better educate
Americans about the disease.
Health experts
believe that a combination of proper diet, weight control, exercise
and regular medical treatment are effective in controlling both
the prevalence and severity of arthritis.
But an article
published in the April issue of The Journal of Rheumatology suggested
that diseases of the bone and muscles, such as arthritis and rheumatism,
were overshadowed in terms of funding, research and education.
A scan of
about 4,300 medical journals between 1991 and 1996 revealed that
diseases such as arthritis ranked ninth out of 12 categories in
frequency of citations, far below those for cancer and heart disease,
according to the article.
Within the
category of arthritis, less than 25 percent of citations were
related to osteoarthritis, the leading cause of arthritis-related
disability.
``These findings
suggest...that osteoarthritis is a relatively neglected condition
within the relatively neglected realm of musculoskeletal diseases,''
wrote Dr. Richard Glazier, the lead author.
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