The Numbers Behind the Gap
Rheumatoid arthritis affects roughly 0.5 to 1 percent of India's adult population, but that burden is not distributed evenly. Women account for nearly 75 percent of all RA cases globally, and data from the Indian Rheumatology Association places the female-to-male ratio in India at close to 3:1. A 2019 study published in the Journal of Family Medicine and Primary Care found that Indian women with RA were also significantly more likely than men to present late, often years after symptoms began, because joint pain in women is routinely attributed to calcium deficiency or general fatigue rather than an autoimmune process. The delay matters. RA does its worst structural damage in the first two years of active inflammation. Every month of missed diagnosis is cartilage that does not come back.
