By Michael Harris
BioWorld Executive Editor
Published: June 25, 2009
I well remember the day I ceded control of my spinal column. Years
ago, I bent over at the waist with my daughter in one arm to pick up
my house keys. I felt a disturbance in my lumbar force that felt like
lava running down my spine. It was just my spine crying and giving me
a preview of the abyss of suffering that I was to experience
forevermore at the whim of my musculoskeletal system. As I fought
blacking out, visions of my dad recurred with his admonition, "Bend
with your knees your waist is only good for holding up your pants!"
It was too late. My moment of negligence sucker-punched my C5 and C6
vertebrae into misalignment and ruptured L4 and L5 into an arthritic
descent that would make every step I took a step-by-step
pain-management decision. Long story short, four surgeries and a
trillion hours of therapy later, now only every other step I take is
a pain-management decision.
For a decade, I developed a stoic demeanor and labeled myself as just
another trooper with a "bad back," the generic term that the
uninformed, unaware and undead use to diagnose themselves as they
live in pain-shrouded delusion, insisting they have a condition,
rather than a disease.
That Crick in Your Neck Is Chronic Disease
Millions of people are shuffling along with latent, undiagnosed cases
of arthritis, attributing their ailments to everything from "just
getting older" to "sometimes my knee just acts up," but the truth
will one day be manifested in what will contribute to staggering
arthritis statistics.
After a lifetime of sliding in the mud-rock at Woodstock, marching
from Selma to Washington in wingtips, pushing the McDonald's sign to
"40 Billion Sold," doing the Twist, running with the bulls,
breakdancing, skateboarding, imprisoning feet in stylish, pointed
shoes that shape your toes into ice cream cones, texting nonstop,
mistaking our spinal column for a weight-bearing muscle, killing
mutants with repetitive thumb strokes, and even just slouching in
front of the TV for 3.5 hours a day in spine-transforming positions
... it's no wonder we all have a crick in our necks, a
weather-forecasting hipbone, a Quasimodo posture and that trick knee
that morphs into enough positions to qualify you for membership in
the Transformers! "Arthrito-bots ... TRANSFORM!"
Sadly, we have gone from the '60s to our 60s, as we have gone from
the Age of Aquarius to the Age of Arthritis.
With apologies to James Rado, Gerome Ragni and Galt MacDermot, who
wrote the original songs for the musical Hair ...
When OA is in the seventh disc
And L-5 disc aligns with none
Then pain will guide the spinal cord
And mobility is gone
This is the dawning of the Age of Arthritis
Age of Arthritis
Arthri-i-tis!
Quality of life devo-o-lving, sympathy from youngsters miss-i-ing
Slip-on shoes, top-loading wa-a-shers, COX-2 inhibitor cocktails,
Arthri-i-tiiis, Arthri-i-tiiis,
Let the Enbrel, let the Enbrel in, the Celebrex,
When you're in pain ...
Anti-inflammatories
Psoriasis and gout abounding
Lyme diseased cranium
And the hip is true titanium
Arthritis, Arthritis!
What Doesn't Kill You ... Can Make You Weaker
In 2009, at least 1.7 million people will have died from chronic
diseases in the U.S., and a majority of those will have suffered from
some form of arthritis as either the primary cause, but more likely,
as an ancillary debilitating and degenerative affliction.
In 2014, when every baby boomer will be over 50 years of age and the
oldest will be staring down 70, arthritis is projected to affect up
to 60 percent of that demographic. That is in addition to having a
pervasive effect on as much as 76 percent of the Greatest Generation.
With more than 80 percent of all baby boomers already past 50 and
resisting the natural tendency to slow down and "act their ages," a
hefty proportion of that demographic is still hiking, dancing,
climbing, jogging, biking, weightlifting and engaging in all manner
of activities and lifestyles that conversely build bodies and minds,
but ravage joints and bones. Worldwide growth in the elderly
population, costly novel therapies, escalating diagnosis rates and an
emergent trend toward more aggressive treatment are prepared to drive
substantial gains in drug and device revenue throughout a 25-year growth model.
Darn, I believe I feel a sneeze coming. While that seemingly
unrelated action seems harmless enough and has nothing to do with the
Great Disabler disease, a sneeze by an arthritic requires preparation
akin to hurricane preparedness. "Hold on to something ... tighten
sacral vertebra muscles ... bite down on an ink pen ... let her rip!
Oh my spine, such pain! It's not over yet ... Category 5 consequent
back muscle spasm warning ... PREPARE TO CRY!"
Who Wants to Live To Be 100 Years Old with This?
No one seems to be able to escape its scourge of scraping bones,
worn-out useless appendages, scalding joints, detaching tissues,
lifeless muscles, filched mobility and 24-7 pain. Although the
elderly still represent the leading demographic for the disease,
arthritis is no longer your grandparents' disease, as no population
class is exempt from its symptoms:
Newborns are susceptible to hereditary and infectious arthritis.
Juvenile arthritis afflicts 500,000 children 18 years and younger.
Young adult arthritis diagnoses have increased 38 percent in the last
25 years.
Middle-aged adults are now the arthritis onset gateway demographic.
The elderly, in majority proportions, have arthritis.
The good news is, arthritis patients can expect to live very long
lives with the affliction. The bad news is, they most often live that
existence with unrelenting excruciating pain. Arthritis can pervade
every aspect of each day for the rest of a life, covering everything
from morning stiffness to terminal immobility. It also is an
unpleasant reality that some of the therapeutics patients take to
treat arthritis, especially the corticosteroids, inflict destructive
consequences on their bones.
Aging Boomers, WWII Class Combine to Create a Mature Market
Recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
revealed that approximately 47 million adults suffer from some form
of arthritis. That is one in nearly five people living in the U.S.
Arthritis is the No. 1 cause of disability in the country, costing
more than $86 billion dollars annually to address the disease.
As ominous as those numbers are, prevailing projections based on
relative trends such as obesity, aging, prevalence and therapeutic
application imply that the pervasiveness of arthritis is on course to
affect at least 33 percent of the U.S. population by 2025. Society's
powerlessness to control the natural process of growing old opens the
door for the disease to largely continue to proliferate at its own
raging rate of affliction, abetted by what will soon be the largest
senior citizen demographic in U.S. history, as the entire baby boomer
generation crowds into what promises to be a standing-room-only
retirement-age sector of society.
The last-born baby boomer denizens will collectively reach 60 around
the quarter-century mark and will bring with them a lifetime of
enough physical wear-and-tear, mental stress, bad dietary habits and
disregarded symptoms to make arthritis a market accountable for more
than $200 billion in total costs, including medical technology,
therapeutics and health care. Health care will include the
wide-ranging, increasing need for assisted care, rehabilitation,
surgery and hospitalization.
--
Editor's note: For more in-depth analysis on arthritis, check
out BioWorld's Arthritis Report 2009: Drug and Med-Tech Innovation
and Economics.
http://www.bioworld.com/servlet/com.accumedia.web.Dispatcher?next=S08443_7432
.
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