Confused

[Kmathe26]

My consultant phoned yesterday and said she didn't have all the results from my blood test on the 13th but my anti ana was fairly strongly positive. My inflammation levels were normal and I've previously had a positive rheumatoid factor. She mentioned a connective tissue disease.. What could I have?

[helixhelix]

It is confusing, so not surprised you feel that way. This new world you've plunged into is full of variation, vagueness and changes in direction. Unfortunately it's not as simple or as obvious as a broken leg, and the doctors need to be a more like detectives to work out the exact thing responsible for your misery. Some are good, and keep hunting till they find it. Others are rubbish. But sounds like yours might be properly interested, which is good.

Anyway, connective tissue disease is the overall name for a whole bunch of different things, including RA, other types of inflammatory arthritis and also scleroderma and lupus and things like that.

You can have undifferentiated connective tissue disease which means it has yet to show itself as a specific one of these diseases. And, sadly, you can also have more than one of them or even a mix of two of them. So people talk about rhupus, which is somewhere between RA and lupus. And a positive ANA is often a sign of lupus rather than RA.

But, the good news is that for most of them there is effective treatment. And the treatment for many of these is similar so there's a bit of overlap.

So, I hope you have an appointment fairly soon so the consultant can explain more to you, and propose some treatment.