 Hello, I am Dr. Sajjan Sainay. I am a consultant rheumatologist and immunologist at KMC Hospital, Mangalore. Today, I will talk briefly on rheumatoid arthritis. In short, we call it RA. It is an inflammatory arthritis, which is very commonly seen in the community. It affects almost 1% of the population, which is a huge number. And these patients typically have very bad joint pains. So, the joint pains involve the small joints of the hands, fingers and the larger joints, like the shoulders, knees and the feet. It may also involve the neck joints. So, patients usually complain of neck pain. And all these joint pains are typically inflammatory in nature. Inflammatory, by that we mean there is a swelling inside these joints. And for the patient, it is very painful at night. It is also painful early morning hours. So, the patient has a lot of difficulty in getting up and doing his routine work. And it is pretty, you know, miserable for the patient. The life, the quality of life is at risk. And if untreated, these patients tend to have these problems going on throughout their life and they also accumulate a lot of joint damage. So, by damage, we mean deformed joints and bent joints and joints on which they cannot load and walk. So, the idea is to detect these patients early and treat them. Because if they are treated adequately, correctly and at the right time, they can have a perfectly normal life with pain-free joints, with deformity-free joints. And they can live life to the fullest, just like you and me. They can walk, work, play, do all the activities that they want. But the most important thing is to see a physician or a rheumatologist, get it diagnosed and treat it accordingly. The treatment involves many drugs. There is a common misconception that steroids are very commonly used and it causes a lot of side effects. That is not true. Steroids we do use in the short term. But then ultimately in the long term, we want to withdraw the steroids, give some other medicines and control the disease. If adequately and correctly done, patients can have perfectly normal life.