Psychological Profile in Children and Adolescents with Severe Course Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Abstract

Objective. Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) is the most common chronic pediatric rheumatic disease. It is recognized that only reliance on clinical signs of disease outcome is inadequate for understanding the impact of illness and its treatment on child's life and functioning. There is a need for a multidisciplinary and holistic approach to children with arthritis which considers both physical and emotional functioning. This study investigated the psychosocial functioning of children and adolescent with JIA and the disease-related changes in their family. Methods. The sample consisted of 33 hospitalized patients, aged 6–16 years. Both parents and the children were given a number of questionnaire to fill out. Clinical information was extracted from the interviews. Results. Self-reported psychological functioning (depression, anxiety, and behavior) was not different from the normal population; however significant psychological suffering was detected by the clinical interview. Conclusions. Children and adolescents with JIA do not show overt psychopathology by structured assessment; nevertheless a more clinically oriented holistic approach confirms JIA as a disrupting event causing relevant changes in the quality of life of the affected families.

Children and adolescents previously treated with glucocorticoids display lower verbal intellectual abilities

“…Compromised memory during treatment in patients may have been re‐established after treatment termination, possibly due to neurogenesis in the hippocampus . Our finding that patients and healthy controls did not differ in behavioural problems is consistent with studies of children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis . Studies of children with nephrotic syndrome, however, have reported increased behavioural problems during glucocorticoid treatment .…”

<p>Depression And Anxiety In Patients With Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis: Current Insights And Impact On Quality Of Life, A Systematic Review</p>

“…[24][25][26][27][28][29] JIA disease duration ranged between 3 months to 15 years in children and 10 to 27 years in adults. [24][25][26][27][28][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44] JIA subtype was described in 14 studies: 13 included polyarticular, [24][25][26]30,31,[35][36][37][38][39][40]45,46 11 included oligoarticular, 24,26,30,31,[35][36][37][38][39][40]46 10 included systemic, 25,…”

“…37 There were 4 studies that reported no clinically significant depressive symptoms within their study population. 27,[31][32][33] These studies all used the CDI or BDI, screens that were used to detect prevalence rates of clinically significant symptoms in other studies from 9% to 36%, 24,25,39 but were notable for patient populations from reportedly high socioeconomic levels 27,33 and/or restricted to either non-acute patients 32,33 or patients without comorbid psychiatric diagnoses. 31 Three studies compared JIA patients to healthy controls, of which two found that JIA patients had worse depressive symptoms.…”

Aporte del uso de herramientas básicas de Telemedicina en la atención de niños y adolescentes con Artritis idiopática juvenil, en el Hospital de Puerto Montt. Chile

“…The reasons for the predominance of the polyarticular form RF (-) are not clear, and although there was German colonization in this region, there is no history of patients with German ancestors in our cohort. On the other hand, it is possible that there may exist sub notification of the oligoarticular form, later diagnoses, preferably consulting the forms with higher joint involvement, a probable hypothesis considering the time between the beginning of symptoms and diagnosis (figure 1B) [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26] . Also noteworthy is the distance from home to the HPM, expressed in kilometers and transport times.…”