The Pattern of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis in a Single Tertiary Center in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Introduction. Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) is the most common chronic arthritis in children. Our aim is to describe demographic, clinical, and laboratory characteristics and treatment of JIA patients followed up in Pediatric Rheumatology clinic in a tertiary center in Saudi Arabia. Methods. Medical records of all patients who are followed up between January 2007 and January 2015 were retrospectively reviewed. Data were collected about demographic, clinical, and laboratory features and treatment. Results. Total patients were 82, males were 31 (37.8%), and mean age of JIA onset was 7.1 ± 3.6 yr. Mean follow-up duration was 2.67±1.6 yr. Systemic onset JIA (SoJIA) was the commonest (36.5%), followed by polyarticular in 29.2% and oligoarticular in 28%. Large and small joints are involved in 76 (92%) and 30 (36.6%), respectively. Main extra-articular feature was fever in 34 (41.4%). Uveitis was diagnosed in 7 (8.5%) and in 5 (21.7%) of oligoarticular JIA. Anemia was found in 49 (59.7%), high ESR in 45 (54.8%), and leukocytosis and thrombocytosis in 33 (40.2%). Positive ANA was found in 30 (36.5%) mainly in oligoarticular subtype as 12 (52%) patients (out of 23) had this positive test. 9 patients (10.9%) required NSAIDs only, 6 patients (7.3%) required NSAIDs and intra-articular steroids only, and 19 (23%) required NSAIDs, methotrexate, steroids, and biologics. Conclusion. SoJIA is the most common JIA subtype in our study. A population based rather than a single center study will give more details about JIA characteristics in Saudi Arabia

The pattern of juvenile idiopathic arthritis; a retrospective Egyptian study

“…While Uveitis was manifested among (6.3%) of cases of oligoarticular and polyarticular subtypes. This was close to Ozdogan et al 21 , El-Hemiari et al 22 21 reported lower results (12%, 5%) respectively. The higher percentage of positive ANA results could be attributed to higher incidence of infections inducing the illness.…”

“…15,20 On contrary, to many studies the numbers of male patients were higher than the females. [11][12][13][14][15][16] However, our results matched Ozdogan et al 21 and El-hemiari et al 22 who reported male predominance.…”

Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis in Jordan: Single-Center Experience

“…Unlike similar studies published in Oman and Tunisia where Polyarticular JIA is the most common subtype 46.7%, 66% respectively (11,12) , whereas systemic juvenile arthritis (36.5%) was the most common subtype in another study from Saudi Arabia (13) . Table 6 summarizes the published data on JIA patterns in different countries.…”

Systemic Form of Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis: Epidemiological, Clinical, Paraclinical and Therapeutic Aspects of 13 Cases in Abidjan

“…However, it provided information on the rarity of JIA in general, then on SF-JIA in our African context. Other studies on this subject had made the same observation [26]. In western countries, it is the oligoarticular form which predominate and SF-JIA represented 5 up to 15% of JIA [27] [28] [29].…”