Genomic progress in pediatric arthritis: recent work and future goals.
OBJECTIVE
Pediatric arthritis is a heterogeneous group of chronic arthropathies that are influenced by complex genetic and perhaps environmental factors. Interacting genetic traits may one day be identified that provide the basis for predicting disease risk and other characteristics such as course, age of onset, and disease severity. The purpose of this review is to describe the recent progress towards identifying the multiple genes related to pediatric arthritis and understand how they relate to each other and to disease pathology.


RESULTS
Candidate gene studies are by far the most widely reported type of genetic studies to date for juvenile arthritis with only one genome-wide screen for juvenile rheumatoid/idiopathic arthritis published. Particular attention is paid to studies of candidate genes with potential immunological roles and those associated with other forms of autoimmunity.


CONCLUSIONS
Genomic studies may perhaps one day provide information to allow future classification systems of childhood arthritis to include molecular biomarkers as a complement to clinical observations, as well as understand how these genes or proteins relate to each other and to disease pathogenesis.
Phelan
James D
JD
William S. Rowe Division of Rheumatology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, 3333 Burnet Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45229-3039, USA.
Thompson
Susan D
SD
D000293:Adolescent; D000367:Age Factors; D001171:Arthritis, Juvenile / Q000209:etiology / Q000235:genetics* / Q000276:immunology / Q000473:pathology; D015551:Autoimmunity / Q000235:genetics*; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D005819:Genetic Markers; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods / Q000639:trends; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable; D012307:Risk Factors
D005819:Genetic Markers