Autoimmune arthritis in children is a group of disorders in which the immune system, by mistake, attacks some tissues or organs in the body, the joints in particular, and causes in inflammation of those tissues or organs. The symptoms of inflammation of the joints are usually pain and maybe stiffness and swelling of those joints too. Those disorders usually start at the age of 16 years and below and are chronic meaning that they will last for no less than 6 weeks. This can be months or years.
In this Article we will provide an introduction to the different types of autoimmune arthritis in children.
The most important types of autoimmune arthritis in children are:
●Systemic arthritis or Still’s disease: in which there are prominent recurrent fevers together with inflammation of the joints and maybe a skin rash too. The laboratory markers of inflammation here are usually so high.
●Polyarthritis which means inflammation of five or more joints.
●Oligoarthritis which means inflammation of 4 or less joints.
●Enthesitis related arthritis: here the child gets inflammation of the joints and/or the entheses which are the points of insertion of the tendons of the muscles to the bones; we call this enthesitis. This is associated with other symptoms or signs that would suggest the diagnosis of the disease called ankylosing spondylitis in adults.
●Psoriatic arthritis: here the child has inflammation of the joints together with psoriasis of the skin or the nails or with other symptoms as inflammation of an entire finger or toe.
●Undifferentiated arthritis: Children here are do not meet criteria for one of the categories above so we call them undifferentiated.
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This post was prepared and published by Dr. Hatem Eleishi. Dr. Hatem Eleishi is a professor of rheumatology at Cairo university (Egypt) and is especially dedicated to supporting arthritis patients with online educational videos and articles about arthritis causes and treatment. He also runs a rheumatology clinic in Cairo and a center for www.tabibakom.com/en that, in addition to providing online rheumatology consultations, also provides online medical consultations in several different medical specialties by expert consultants from Egypt, Canada and the United States.
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