Digging deeper for greater precision and more impact in JIA

Abstract

Optimizing the management of childhood arthritis requires detailed knowledge of the disease in an individual patient. Advances in 2014 show how in-depth genetic studies and insights into immunopathogenesis could translate into clinical biomarkers and, eventually, individualized therapy.

Cytokine Biomarkers of Disease Activity and Therapeutic Response after Initiating Methotrexate Therapy in Patients with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

“…[24][25][26] With the expanding armamentarium of DMARDs available to the clinical practitioner, clinical decision-making support tools are critical to the therapeutic goal of early disease control in patients with JIA and are expected to result in a paradigm shift from the current trial-and-error approach to drug therapy. 27 As key mediators of the pathogenesis of JIA and as the targets of many of the newer therapies, cytokines represent an obvious and practical biomarker of drug response. Therefore, we hypothesized that plasma cytokine concentrations in children with JIA are associated with disease activity and therapeutic response.…”