Infectious Arthritis

A single joint swells. It becomes hot, red, throbbing — every movement hurts, and the pain has a different quality than ordinary joint inflammation. It is deeper, more pressing, often accompanied by fever, chills, a feeling of general weakness. The knee, the hip, sometimes the shoulder — usually a large, load-bearing joint — becomes unusable. And not through wear and tear, not through an autoimmune reaction, but through something foreign that has broken in.