Q: I am a 35 years old housewife. Since the past 3-4 months I have been suffering from pain in my right hip joint specially when I sit cross legged for 15-20 min. And for the past 15-20 days I have pain in my left knee too. It pains more when I sit on the floor or when I fold my leg or while walking. I have gone for the test of uric acid and ASO titre. The reports are normal (uric acid - 3.1 mg/dl, ASO titre-133 IU/ml). I taking Tab Macalvit 500 and Iron tonic. Please tell me what my problem is? Why do I have so much pain, increasing day by day particularly when I do regular daily exercise. What is the remedy?

A:You would have to be clinically assessed by taking a detailed history and performing a careful physical examination to find out if you an inflammatory or a mechanical-structural type of joint disease. It is crucial because the treatment of the 2 groups of joint diseases is entirely different. It would have helped if you had done a test called ESR. Any way, under the circumstances, I strongly recommend that you see a Rheumatologist (NOT an orthopaedic surgeon) who can assess you and find out if you have an inflammatory or a noninflammatory disease. Then, you can be treated appropriately. One such doctor is Dr. Sanjiv Kapoor in Delhi (tel: 98113-73602). By the way, uric acid test should never be done in women as gout is strictly a disease of men over 40 years of age. Similarly the ASLO OR ASO test is only meant for children below 12 years of age as rheumatic fever does not occur after that age. Obviously, doing those tests in your case was a total waste of your good blood and hard earned money! Do not go to such doctors who do not know what tests are necessary in joint disease patients.