Enthesitis-related Juvenile Inflammatory Arthritis: Long-term Outcome

The authors from Oslo and Los Angeles carried out a case control study of 55 children identified retrospectively with enthesitis-related arthritis (ERA) (a subtype of juvenile inflammatory athritis [JIA]) who were admitted to Rikshospitalet Medical Center in Oslo from 1980 to 1985 and then followed prospectively for at least another decade. The term enthesitis refers to inflammation at the insertion point of tendons, ligaments, joint capsules, or fascia into bone. There were 2 control groups. One consisted of age-, sex-, and geographic region-matched controls selected from the national population registry that served as health status assessment controls. The other control group consisted of 205 patients with another subtype of JIA, either oligoarthritis or polyarthritis, who had been admitted to the same medical center during the same time period. All of these JIA patients were evaluated for disease status, and a random subset, matched as closely as possible for age, was evaluated for health status. Because ERA differs from other types of JIA in terms of sex and age of onset, the JIA …