Abstract
In a recent paper we discussed the presenceof anti-keratin antibodies (AKA) of the IgG class detected in the sera of patients withd e fined juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) using an indirect immunofluorescence anti-body test (ImmunoGloTM,Immco Diagnos-tics,Buffalo,USA),especially with regardto the relationship between the presence of AKA and disease severity and activity as well as specificity to a JIA category. As our cohort invo l ved 60 patients (28 males and 32 females) aged 4 to 44 years (median 18.5) years it is obvious that the group studied represented patients with JIA onset before 16 years of age and therefore involving paediatric cases and adults with along duration of the disease.
We focused on the JIA group as a whole since paediatric patients treated at the Outpatient Department of Rheumatology in the University Hospital Motol in Prague remain our patients even after they reach the age of 18.