The following statistics are from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Arthritis Foundation:
- Nearly 70 million people in the U.S. have some form of arthritis or chronic joint symptoms.
- About 300,000 children in the U.S. have arthritis. Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) is the most common form of juvenile arthritis.
- Rheumatic diseases are the leading cause of disability among persons age 65 and older.
- Approximately 20.7 million adults in the United States have the most common form of arthritis, osteoarthritis, also called degenerative joint disease. Most persons over the age of 75 are affected with osteoarthritis in at least one joint, making this condition a leading cause of disability in the US.
- Rheumatoid arthritis, the most crippling form of arthritis, affects approximately 3 million Americans and two to three times more women than men. Further, the average onset for rheumatoid arthritis is between the ages of 30 and 50 years old.
- Lupus affects women about eight to 10 times as often as men, and often occurs around the ages of 18 to 45.
- Fibromyalgia affects about 2 percent of the US population
- Nine out of 10 people who have lupus are women, and lupus is three times more common in African-American women than Caucasian women.
- Women are seven times more likely to have fibromyalgia than men.