The most frequent and common symptoms are:
- Swelling and joint pain, which improves with movement and worsens with rest. Joints, such as the hands and feet, wrists, elbows, shoulders, hips, knees and ankles may have problems, although this varies depending on the type of arthritis.
- Stiffness in the joints of varying duration in the mornings.
- Difficulty moving the affected joints.
- Progressive joint deformity and loss of joint mobility.
- Heat and redness of the skin covering the affected joints. It occurs only in arthritis appearing very intensely (such as gout), and are usually absent in chronic arthritis.