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| |  Gold Wedding Rings Delay Rheumatoid Arthritis LONDON -- September 3, 1997 -- Gold wedding rings can delay the progression of rheumatoid arthritis in the fingers on which they are worn, finds research in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases. Rheumatoid arthritis is characterised by progressive erosion of the joints and normally affects joints on both sides of the body at the same time. After noticing that the ring finger of a 62-year-old woman who had had rheumatoid arthritis for 47 years was significantly less affected by the disease than her other fingers, researchers decided to ascertain if this was a common occurrence. They took X-ray pictures of the hands of 30 ring wearers and 25 non-ring wearers who had had the disease for a minimum of two years. The knuckle joint of the ring fingers of those who wore rings all or most of the time were up to three times less badly eroded than the equivalent joint of the right hands; no such difference was evident in the knuckle joints of those who did not wear rings. The middle finger knuckle joints of ring wearers also tended to be less badly affected by rheumatoid arthritis, but the disease had not spared the rest of the finger joints. The authors suggest that gold from the rings could pass through the skin and into the local lymph glands "downstream" to the nearby knuckle joint, in sufficient quantities to delay erosion. Gold has been used to treat rheumatic disease since the turn of the century, but accumulates in much smaller amounts in joint tissues than in other areas of the body, such as the bone marrow and liver. Precisely how it works remains a mystery.
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