Telangana’s women are crippled by arthritis, and AIIMS finds the same old culprit: Fluoride in their water

Synopsis : A study from the AIIMS Hyderabad discovered that people drinking untreated underground water face 3.6 times higher odds of developing severe arthritis due to the presence of high amounts of fluoride. The findings align with earlier studies documenting musculoskeletal pain and stiffness in high-fluoride areas, even among people who never developed classical skeletal fluorosis.

In rural Telangana, middle-aged women climb steps with wincing pain, their knees bearing the weight of decades of chronic arthritis. What they don’t know is that the underground water they’ve been drinking for years might be destroying their joints from the inside.

A new study from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Hyderabad, has shattered assumptions about arthritis in rural India.