You can experience hand pain for a variety of reasons and at any age. For example, as you get older, you may start to wonder if arthritis is the cause of your achy hands, swollen fingers and sore wrists. While arthritis is one of the most well-known causes of hand pain, it’s not the only one.
Below, we cover signs and symptoms of hand arthritis, what part of your hands can be affected and possible causes. We’ll also go over other reasons your hands may be hurting, and when to see a doctor to help ease the ache.
Common signs and symptoms of arthritis in your hands
Arthritis is joint inflammation and can occur in many different parts of the body – it’s especially common in hands. Hand arthritis can cause pain, swelling, stiffness and deformity in your fingers, thumbs and wrists.
There is no cure for hand arthritis, and symptoms tend to worsen over time. However, your primary care doctor or hand specialist can help you manage your symptoms and possibly refer you to a specialist for advanced arthritis care.
Early signs of arthritis in hands
When you use your hands, you probably don’t give them a second thought. But if you start to feel a dull ache or burning sensation when using your hands, it may be an early sign of arthritis. Other early signs include:
- Pain and stiffness in the hands in the morning that may improve throughout the day
- Noticeable swelling in the hands or wrists
- Warm, red skin around the affected joint
- Weakness in the hands
- Deformity
Symptoms of hand arthritis can worsen over time
As arthritis progresses, the condition’s symptoms can worsen over time:
- Worsening pain – Pain you experience may change from a dull ache to a sharp pain. This pain is more severe than the hand pain you’ve experienced previously, and it may become so intense that it wakes you up at night. The tissue around your affected joint may also become tender to the touch.
- Crepitus – This is a feeling of grating or grinding in the affected joint when using your fingers. You may also feel a cracking or clicking that occurs more frequently than the occasional joint crack or pop.
- Loss of hand function – Pain may change the way you use your hands, and swollen or bent fingers can make it more difficult to do everyday tasks. You may also experience weakness in your hands and wrists, reduced range of motion or a feeling that your hands can’t fully open or close.
- Changes in appearance – Your fingers may look large, deformed and abnormally bent. As the cartilage in your fingers breaks down, you can also experience bony growths called bone nodes or bone spurs, a result of new bone growth at the joint. If you have hand arthritis, it’s possible to develop nodes at the finger’s middle joint (also known as Bouchard’s nodes) and at the finger’s end joint (also called Heberden’s nodes).
Symptoms of hand arthritis can be mistaken for other conditions
Because of an overlap of symptoms, it’s easy to mistake hand arthritis for other conditions.
Carpal tunnel syndrome
Arthritis can be confused with carpal tunnel syndrome. But even though both cause hand pain and can make your hands weaker, they are caused by different things and usually have different symptoms. Arthritis can occur for a number of reasons, whereas carpal tunnel syndrome is caused by pressure on the median nerve in the wrist. Carpal tunnel syndrome usually causes numbness and tingling, which can make the hand feel like it’s asleep. Arthritis doesn’t typically cause changes in sensation.
You can experience both carpal tunnel syndrome and hand arthritis at the same time, but only carpal tunnel syndrome can go away with treatment.
Tendonitis
Because the symptoms are so similar to one another, hand arthritis may be mistaken for tendonitis, which is inflammation in the tendons due to overuse. When you repeat the same motions over and over, tendons can get inflamed. As a result, it may be a bit difficult or painful when you try to move the tendon, resulting in tendonitis. An example of tendonitis is trigger finger which is a type of hand tendonitis where your finger gets stuck in a bent position.
Both tendonitis and arthritis can be painful and get worse over time, and you can experience them together. But tendonitis is different from arthritis for several reasons. With tendonitis, you may feel discomfort in places besides your joints – for example, up your arm. And unlike arthritis, it’s possible for tendonitis to go away completely if it’s properly treated and given time to heal.
The parts of the hand most affected by arthritis
Arthritis affects your joints, where two bones meet, and there are a lot of bones in your hands, which means there are also a lot of joints. To put it in perspective, the human body overall has around 350 joints, but there are more than 50 joints in your two hands. Hand joints are a common location where people develop arthritis, including:
- Fingers, specifically the top joint nearest to the fingernails, the middle joint and the knuckles
- Thumbs, most commonly at the basal joint, which is the joint at the base of the thumb
- Wrist, where the radius bone meets the ulna bone in the forearm (distal radioulnar), in the eight small carpal bones in the wrist (midcarpal), and where the two forearm bones (the radius and ulna) and carpal bones meet (radiocarpal)
How arthritis can affect your hands, plus possible causes
You can have several different types of arthritis in your hand, but the most common are osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. Each of these has different causes.
Osteoarthritis in hands
This is the most common type of arthritis in your hands and in the rest of the body. It occurs when the cartilage at the ends of your bones starts to break down. This cartilage helps to cushion bones so they can glide across each other without rubbing. When cartilage breaks down, bones can rub together painfully. Over time, it can cause stiffness and loss of movement.
Osteoarthritis is most common in the wrist, at the joint at the base of your thumb, and the middle and top (near fingernails) joints of your fingers. It’s a normal part of aging, and it’s commonly called degenerative or “wear and tear” arthritis. If it does develop, how severe it is can be affected by how much you used your hands over time.
Post-traumatic arthritis
This is a type of osteoarthritis that occurs quickly, usually after a bone fracture or dislocation, and is a result of damage within the affected joint. Car accidents and falls are common causes of injury, so post-traumatic arthritis can affect people of any age. But unlike other forms of arthritis, it affects younger people more commonly than older people due to things like sports-related injuries.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in hands
RA is an autoimmune disease where the body’s immune system attacks its own healthy tissues in the joints. This causes the joint lining to swell and affect your body’s ability to produce the fluid that allows cartilage in the joints to glide smoothly against each other during movement. Over time, the inflammation in the joint’s lining deteriorates the cartilage protecting the ends of the bones and can also damage your bones.
Rheumatoid arthritis generally affects the small joints in your wrists, hands and fingers – and usually the same joints on both sides of your body at once. For instance, if arthritis affects the thumb joint on one hand, it's likely to affect the thumb joint on your other hand too.
It’s especially important to get treatment from a rheumatologist (a physician that specializes in autoimmune disorders) for this type of arthritis. If left untreated, it can damage your heart, lungs, eyes and other parts of your body.
Psoriatic arthritis in hands
Psoriatic arthritis is linked to psoriasis, a chronic skin condition that causes uncomfortable red patches, often with a silvery scale-like layer on top. People with psoriasis typically have the skin condition long before developing psoriatic arthritis, but it is possible to experience joint problems before developing any skin patches.
Like other types of arthritis, symptoms of psoriatic arthritis include joint pain, swelling and stiffness. It’s not very common – less than 1% of people who don’t have the skin form of psoriasis are diagnosed with it. But for people who have psoriasis, around 30% will develop psoriatic arthritis at some point in their life. Getting treatment for this type of arthritis is extremely important because it can be debilitating if it’s left untreated. Psoriatic arthritis is also best managed by a rheumatologist.
Gout
Gout is a painful form of arthritis that most commonly affects the big toe, but can affect the hands as well. It occurs when you have high levels of uric acid in your blood, which can then form urate crystals that accumulate in your joints, causing inflammation and pain.
Diet, weight, medical conditions and certain medications are common causes of gout, but lifestyle and diet changes make for relatively easy treatment. Left untreated, gout can develop into more serious health conditions like recurring gout and kidney stones.
Who’s most at risk of getting hand arthritis
While anyone at any age can develop hand arthritis, you’re more likely to develop it if:
- You’re over 25, as rheumatoid arthritis and psoriatic arthritis can start to appear between the ages of 35-50, and osteoarthritis usually starts after age 50.
- You’re a woman, or a person assigned female at birth, due to declining estrogen levels as you age.
- You’re overweight, which can cause stress on your joints.
- You’ve previously dislocated or broken joints in your hands or fingers, raising your risk of post-traumatic arthritis.
- You have a family history of arthritis.
Get a helping hand for your hurting hands
Don’t overlook hand pain. If your hands hurt or you think you have arthritis, talk to your primary care doctor or a hand specialist. They can help determine what’s causing your symptoms, as well as help you get relief from hand arthritis symptoms with at-home treatment recommendations, medication, and lifestyle and diet changes. If needed, they can also refer you to a rheumatologist or an orthopedist (a surgeon who specializes in hand and wrist) for more specialized care.
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