Polyneuropathy in Rheumatoid Arthritis (literature review)

Rheumatoid arthritis is the most common rheumatological disease. In addition to joint pathology, it often causes damage of other organs and tissues. This article discusses the possibility of diffuse damage of the peripheral nervous system in rheumatoid arthritis - frequency, mechanisms of damage, peculiarities of the clinical symptoms. The relevance of this problem is due to the possibility of subclinical course of polyneuropathy in rheumatoid arthritis, and, consequently, the lack of diagnosis, while one of its variants - autonomic neuropathy, is a life-threatening pathology. In the presence of pain in the clinical picture of polyneuropathy, problems arise in its interpretation (neuropathic, nociceptive - joint pain), and, therefore, errors in dose adjustment of disease-modifying drugs are possible. For neurologists the problem of polyneuropathy in rheumatoid arthritis is interesting from the point of view of diagnosing the etiology of this disease, which is always a difficult task.