Chronic joint pain and gum disease linked, suggests new research

Tracing this connection between the two conditions could help develop therapies for rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune inflammatory disease that attacks the lining of the joints and can cause heart, lung and eye problems. The approach that led to the study could prove fruitful in other disease contexts, such as cancer.

Vicky said, “Data gathered in experiments from living organisms or cells or tissue grown in Petri dishes is really important to confirm hypotheses, but, at the same time, this data perhaps holds more information than we are immediately able to derive from it.”

Vicky’s hunch was confirmed when she took a deeper look into data collected from rheumatoid arthritis patients by Dana Orange, an associate professor of clinical investigation and a rheumatologist, and Bob Darnell, a professor and attending physician at Rockefeller University and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.