Paget’s disease usually affects the bones in the pelvis. Other areas that sometimes become infected include the spine, thigh bones, skull, shin bones and the arm bones.
Bone symptoms
Bone pain is the most common symptom of Paget’s disease. The pain is usually worse at night when the body is lying down.
Affected bones may be more vulnerable to damage and be easily fractured or broken.
As Paget’s disease progresses, you may experience deformities in the affected bones, such as twisted or misshaped limbs, or a curvature of the spine (scoliosis).
Joint symptoms
Abnormal bone growth can cause damage to nearby cartilage. Cartilage is the thick, spongy tissue that cushions your joints. Damage to the cartilage can lead to progressive damage of your joints, which is known as osteoarthritis.
Symptoms of osteoarthritis include:
- pain,
- stiffness (which is worse when you wake up in the morning, but usually improves within about 30 minutes of when you start moving), and
- difficulty moving your affected joints.
See Useful links, above, for more information about osteoarthritis.
Nerve symptoms
Many of the major nerves in your body run through or alongside your bones. Abnormal bone growth can result in a bone compressing, ‘pinching’ or damaging a nerve.
This can lead to a wide range of symptoms that will depend on where the affected nerve is, and what its main purpose is. Possible symptoms affecting the nerves (neurological symptoms) include:
- pain that radiates, or ‘travels’, from the base of your spine down into your legs (sciatica), or alternatively pain that travels from your neck into your arms and chest (cervical radiculopathy),
- numbness or tingling in the affected limbs,
- headaches,
- blurred vision, and
- hearing loss.
