title: Outcomes and disease activity measures for assessing treatments in the idiopathic inflammatory myopathies.
abstract: The assessment and treatment of patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathy has taken a major step forward over the past few years. Through the efforts of multi-disciplinary international groups of experts interested in the management of patients with myositis, initiatives have led to the development of a core set of outcome measures critical to their assessment. Similarly, the lack of consensus on several issues of clinical trial design has been addressed resulting in the development of a definition of clinical improvement for adult and juvenile patients with inflammatory myopathy using the core set outcomes. The final step in the puzzle of well-designed therapeutic trials in myositis is the determination of consensus guidelines to conduct such trials in adult and pediatric populations of myositis patients.
authors.affiliation: University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, South 703, Biomedical Science Tower, 3500 Terrace Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15261, USA. oddis@dom.pitt.edu
authors.forename: Chester V
authors.initials: CV
authors.lastname: Oddis
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D006801:Humans; D009220:Myositis / Q000503:physiopathology* / Q000628:therapy*; D017410:Practice Guidelines as Topic; D016896:Treatment Outcome