Early rheumatoid arthritis tends to affect your smaller joints first particularly the joints that attach your fingers to your hands and your toes to your feet.

• Tenderness, warm, swollen joints
• Stiffness (that is usually worse in the mornings and after inactivity).
• Fatigue, fever, loss of appetite.

RA signs and symptoms may vary in severity and may even come go. Periods of increased disease activity called flares, alternate with periods of relative remission when the swelling and pain fade or disappear. Over the time, RA can cause joints to deform and shift out of place.