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Objective: To develop a composite DAS for JDM and provide preliminary evidence of its validity.
Methods: The Juvenile DermatoMyositis Activity Index (JDMAI) is composed of four items: physician's global assessment of overall disease activity; parent's/child's global assessment of child's wellbeing; measurement of muscle strength; and assessment of skin disease activity. The score of the JDMAI is the arithmetic sum of the scores of each individual component. Six versions of the JDMAI were tested, which differed in the tools used to assess the third and fourth items. Validation procedures were conducted using three large multinational patient samples including a total of 627 patients.
Results: The JDMAI was found to possess face and content validity, good construct validity, satisfactory internal consistency (Cronbach's alpha = 0.58-0.89), fair responsiveness to clinically important change (standardized response mean = 0.82-3.12 among patients improved) and strong capacity to discriminate patients judged as being in the state of inactive disease or low, moderate or high disease activity by the physician (P < 0.001) or whose parents were satisfied or not satisfied with the course of their child's illness (P < 0.001). Overall, the six versions of the JDMAI showed similar metrological performances in validation analyses.
Conclusion: The JDMAI was found to possess good measurement properties in a large population of patients with a wide range of disease activity, and is, therefore, suitable for use in both clinical and research settings. The final version of the JDMAI will be selected after its prospective validation.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/rheumatology/key421 | DOI Listing |
Neurorehabil Neural Repair
September 2025
Department of Sport, Exercise and Rehabilitation, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK.
Background: Gait impairment in Parkinson's disease (PD) occurs early and pharmaceutical interventions do not fully restore this function. Visual cueing has been shown to improve gait and alleviate freezing of gait (FOG) in PD. Technological development of digital laser shoe visual cues now allows for visual cues to be used continuously when walking.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArthritis Rheumatol
September 2025
Washington DC Veterans Affairs Medical Center; Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA.
Objective: To evaluate the clinical characteristics, social deprivation, insurance coverage, and medication use across regional subsets of patients with psoriatic arthritis (PsA) in the US.
Methods: A cross-sectional study of PsA patients in the Rheumatology Informatics System for Effectiveness (RISE) registry between January 2020 and March2023 was conducted. Distribution of high disease activity (HDA - RAPID3>12), high comorbidity (RxRisk ≥90 percentile), high Area Deprivation Index (ADI ≥80), insurance coverage, prednisone ≥10mg daily, and all DMARD therapies across geographic regions were evaluated.
Haematologica
September 2025
Division of Medical Oncology, University Hospital Basel, Basel, Switzerland; Laboratory of Translational Immuno-Oncology, Department of Biomedicine, University and University Hospital Basel, Basel.
We previously used a disease-specific B cell receptor (BCR) point mutation (IGLV3-21R110) for selective targeting of a high-risk subset of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) with chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells. Since CLL is a disease of the elderly and a significant fraction of patients is not able to physically tolerate CAR T cell treatment, we explored bispecific antibodies as an alternative for precision targeting of this tumor mutation. Heterodimeric IgG1-based antibodies consisting of a fragment crystallizable region (Fc) attached to both an anti-IGLV3-21R110 Fab and an anti-CD3 (UCHT1) single chain variable fragment (R110-bsAb) selectively killed cell lines engineered to express high levels of the neoepitope as well as primary CLL cells using healthy donor and CLL patient-derived T cells as effectors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHaematologica
September 2025
Department of Oncology, Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD,.
Immunotherapies, including cell therapies, are effective anti-cancer agents. However, cellular product persistence can be limiting with short functional duration of activity contributing to disease relapse. A variety of manufacturing protocols are used to generate therapeutic engineered T-cells; these differ in techniques used for T-cell isolation, activation, genetic modification, and other methodology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Exp Biol
September 2025
Institute of Environmental Sciences, Faculty of Biology, Jagiellonian University, Kraków, Poland.
The adverse effects of Western diets (WD), high in both fat and simple sugars, which contribute to obesity and related disorders, have been extensively studied in laboratory rodents, but not in non-laboratory animals, which limits the scope of conclusions. Unlike laboratory mice or rats, non-laboratory rodents that reduce body mass for winter do not become obese when fed a high-fat diet. However, it is not known whether these rodents are also resistant to the adverse effects of WD.
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