Abstract
Inflammatory myopathies represent a heterogennic group of acquired myopathies, which have an inflammatory cause. Idiopathic inflammatory myopathies have the most frequent occurrence and they are differentiated by a course, occurrence of associated diseases, by treatment effect and by findings in muscle biopsy.
Myopathies in systemic diseases, vasculitides, viral, bacterial, fungal and parasitary infectious diseases have an inflammatory cause too. In the following paper we present overview of basic inflammatory myopathies with emphasis on the clinical characteristics and muscle biopsy findings.