'Old Person's' Arthritis Afflicts Thousands of Kids

Jan. 17, 2008— -- Breanne Watterson was just 4 when the hip pain began.

The preschooler went through periods in which she limped to school or had to be carried, says her mom, Victoria Watterson.

Doctors dismissed the attacks as "growing pains," but the girl suffered through five years in which she had spells of fever and pain in her hip and arms. "She couldn't play at all," Watterson says.

In 2004, doctors finally confirmed what Watterson had feared all along: Breanne, then age 9, was diagnosed with a potentially crippling form of arthritis.

Breanne is just one of an estimated 300,000 children in the USA who have some form of arthritis, according to a report released last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the first to quantify arthritis in kids.

The CDC report, along with other evidence, helps dispel the myth that arthritis strikes only in old age.