Diagnoses and Treatments of Juvenile and Rheumatoid Arthritis

Dear Colleagues,

Inflammatory arthritides affect kids and adults worldwide and represent key disabling illnesses when diagnosed and treated lately in the disease course. The outcome changes when diagnosed and treated very early on. In pediatric age, inflammatory arthritis presents a prevalence of JIA ranging from 3.8 to 400/100,000, with an incidence of 1.6 to 23/100,000 kids. The differences rely on the existence of at least five subtypes, each with a different pathophysiology and, therefore, a possible different therapeutic strategy.

In the adult age range, prevalence ranges between 14 and 36/100,000, with an incidence of 22/100,000 that doubles in the First Nations in North America. The great discovery of the last thirty years has been the availability of new drugs and the demonstration that, when used early on after diagnosis, the control of inflammation and bone-joint damage can lead to full or satisfactory remission with a pretty full maintenance of daily living activities. There are at least four subsets of the disease (seropositive, seronegative, RA in the elderly, and the difficult-to-treat subsets) that deserve specific attention because diagnosis and treatment may be particularly problematic. All these topics will be deeply covered in the coming Special Issue,which will describe the achievements obtained so far and the unmet needs that still need to be defined.

Prof. Dr. Gianfranco Ferraccioli
Guest Editor

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