Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) can create a lot of severe impacts on your body. This inflammatory condition is commonly found to affect the joints, but it might also affect different other body parts including your internal organs.
The most significant organ affected by rheumatoid arthritis is your eyes. This condition can lead to a lot of issues that can affect your eye health, especially, if it is left untreated.
Apart from the common rheumatology symptoms including swelling, pain, and inflammation in the joints, you have to look for other symptoms in various body parts like skin, eyes, etc. to know the progress of rheumatoid arthritis. This condition will usually affect other body parts apart from your joints when it becomes severe.
Rheumatoid Arthritis And Eyes
The severe inflammation associated with rheumatoid arthritis can act on disparate areas of your body starting with the eyes. A few of the severe complicacies linked to rheumatoid arthritis are:
Dry Eyes
This is one of the common eye problems reported in association with RA. The medical term used to denote this particular medical condition is keratoconjunctivitis sicca. RA can cause severe inflammation which can also cause various abnormalities in the tear glands. This can reduce the fluid secretion thereby making your eyes dry.
The intensity of symptoms caused by dry eyes can be more common during the later part of the day, as the tears from your tear glands will be dried up and evaporated by this time. Some other symptoms you have to notice include blurred vision, redness, and a feeling of debris inside your eyes.
Redness In The Eyes
Redness that occurs along with RA can result from scleritis or the intense inflammation present in the sclera of your eyes. Redness caused by scleritis cannot be controlled by your eye drops and this condition can also result in pain in the eyes, reduced visibility, and light sensitivity.
Uveitis
This is another complication that can result from RA. This problem is usually seen during the juvenile form of rheumatoid arthritis. Uveitis is a result of the swelling occurring in the layer between the sclera and retina – uvea. The signs include pain, redness, faded vision, and light sensitivity.
Rheumatoid arthritis can even affect your vision if you do not take proper treatment. Hence, make sure that you take rheumatism treatment at the earliest to prevent various complications resulting from this condition.
Apart from eye problems, RA can also cause skin issues, lung diseases, anemia, heart problems, etc. Therefore, remember to consult with a doctor.
