Simply stated, Rheumatoid Lung Disease is where Rheumatoid Arthritis causes, in one way or another, lung complications. As simple as that sounds, this is a very complex topic. There are no less than 20 different types of lung complications that can be traced back to Rheumatoid Arthritis. Many of these different diseases share similar symptoms, while others typically have no symptoms. And because of this, accurate diagnoses can be difficult for some. In this article we're going to try a provide a good overview of Rheumatoid Lung, it's causes and some of the more common diseases that fall into this category. So, let us begin this journey at the beginning, with the causes...
Of course, the biggest cause of Rheumatoid Lung is Rheumatoid Arthritis (imagine that). But in addition to RA, it could also be cause by some of the medication used to treat RA, infection the the body couldn't fight off because of the afore mentioned medications, and even other (coexisting) medical conditions (RA plus asthma for example).
Studies have been done on many aspects of Rheumatoid Lung, but because off all the variables and differences in the studies it is hard to draw precise conclusions. As a result we can only speak in generalities at this time. But here are the conclusions that we've drawn from the papers and articles that we've read. The most common forms of Rheumatoid Lung are interstitial lung disease (ILD) and pleural disease. ILD, obliterative bronchiolitis (OB), drug reactions, and infections tend to impact a persons life more than the others. From this we see that ILD (which is similar to idiopathic interstitial pneumonias) is the most common form and is also one of the most damaging.
Below is a list of the diseases we know of that fit under the Rheumatoid Lung umbrella. We've attempted to break the list into categories to keep things organized. However, some diseases seem to fit into multiple categories. In addition, we would like to point out that there are bound to be some that we don't have listed. If you know of one that we've missed, please let us know.
As we write articles on each disease, we will link to those articles from this page.