Juvenile idiopathic arthritis symptoms

These findings add new knowledge to the underlying processes regulating the clinical features of the disease.

Also, recognizing this immune imbalance may help clinicians diagnose systemic JIA, the journal Joint Bone Spine reports. Systemic juvenile arthritis is an autoimmune disorder that accounts for about 10 percent of juvenile arthritis cases.

Although rare, systemic JIA is associated with a poor outcome and is directly responsible for more than two-thirds of JIA patient deaths.

The patients included 41 children with polyarthritis, 30 with enthesitis-related arthritis ERAand 30 with systemic JIA. They were also classified as having active disease moderate or high disease activity or inactive disease mild disease activity or inactivity. These patients also had significantly more myeloid dendritic cells, which are important regulators of autoimmune response, than any other group of patients and controls in the study. These proteins are involved in the interaction of dendritic cells and T-cells, preventing the activation of an immune response.

These levels of these inhibitory signals were lower in patients with active systemic JIA. Also, a low percentage of PD-L1 in myeloid dendritic cells was found to be correlated with higher disease activity scores and the development of fever.