AnneMarie Brescia, MD, FACR, FAAP, is chief of the Division of Pediatric Rheumatology at Nemours/AI DuPont Hospital for Children, Wilmington, Del., and not involved in the preparation of the review. She notes that the authors clarified and unified the multitude of genetic studies available on RA and drew a unique conclusion by formulating the four clusters. The available information was synthesized into a very logical and understandable model.
“I think this, along with other similar studies, gives us enough evidence that adult and pediatric rheumatologists should sit down and start talking about formulating an age-spanning nomenclature,” she continues. “We should be thinking about a continuum of arthritic disease instead of juvenile vs. adult disease. This also allows us to use information to start working toward applying the adult paradigm to the treatment of juvenile-onset arthritis.”
Kurt Ullman has been a freelance writer for more than 30 years and a contributing writer to The Rheumatologist for 10 years.
Reference
- Nigrovic PA, Raychaudhuri S, Thompson SD. Review: Genetics and the classification of arthritis in adults and children. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2018 Jan;70(1):7–17.