Background: The aim of this study was to assess predictors of remission in children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA), treated with intra-articular corticosteroid injection (IACI) as monotherapy or in combination with methotrexate (MTX).
Methods: A retrospective study of 43 patients diagnosed with different JIA subtypes and followed-up at a tertiary center between 2000 and 2014. We included patients treated with IACI as monotherapy or in combination with MTX at onset or thereafter. We excluded patients treated with MTX as monotherapy or in combination with biologics. Patients were divided into two groups on the basis of assigned treatment. Primary outcomes were disease remission and duration. We performed descriptive analysis, bivariate analysis and cross-correlation analysis between variables. Statistically significant results (P value <0.05) were chosen as variables for multivariate analysis.
Results: Median age of onset was 4.56 years (SD±3.85). Median time between disease onset and first IACI was 16.9 months (SD±34.7). We evaluated between time to remission in relation to age, time interval between onset and first IACI, time between onset and start of treatment with MTX, and time between first and second IACI. All of these were statistically significant (P value <0.05) in bivariate analysis, but time between onset and first IACI was the only statistically significant result, using multiple linear regression analysis. Therefore, in our study, 37 patients (86%) of patients went into remission on medication after a median disease duration of 48.8 months.
Conclusions: We found that remission was related to time between onset and first IACI. Our predictive model showed that early IACI can be considered as a strong predictor of remission.