What is a neuritis?
Neuritis is a common malfunction of the nervous system, causing pain due to an an inflammation of the peripheral nerves (those outside of the central nervous system). The inflammation prevents the correct transmission of nerve impulses, and thus blocks sensory and motor functions. There are several possible causes of neuritis :
- Injury, pressure, or overloading of a part of the body, such as from a worn vertebral disc (causing 'sciatica') or a broken bone.
- Infection, from for example diphtheria, polio, tetanus, leprosy, or the herpes virus (causing 'shingles').
- Peripheral vascular disease, for example gout.
- Poisoning, from drugs or alcohol, or even from chemicals or heavy metals (e.g. organo-phosphates, arsenic, mercury or lead).
- Metabolic, from nutritional problems such as vitamin deficiencies, or diseases such as diabetes.
The first of these is sometimes referred to as 'entrapment syndromes', because nerves can easily be compressed, when passing through confined spaces, by the surrounding bones, ligaments or fibrous tissues.
Reference : Human Disease - Crowley (Amazon link)
Resources :
In this section we've added a few alternative study aids to help you along.
- Articles - Here you'll find a range of short articles on basic anatomy and physiology topics, complete with a few 'test yourself' questions for each one.
- Images and pdf's - Just in case you get tired of looking at the screen we've provided images and pdf files that you can print out and use for 'off-line' practice.
- Word Roots - When you learn the word roots, prefixes and suffixes contained within anatomical and medical terms, you can often work out what they mean. This can be a useful skill as you progress in your studies, so we've provided a dictionary to help you!
- Games - Finally in the resources section, we've added some simple games to make anatomy and physiology practice a little bit more fun.