The National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases
(NIAMS) at the National Institutes of Health is sponsoring an international
multi-center trial to be conducted in both adult and juvenile myositis.
This study will be directed and coordinated by Dr. Chester Oddis in
the Division of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology at the University
of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and Dr. Ann Reed, Chair Pediatric
Rheumatology, Mayo Foundation and School of Medicine at the Mayo Clinic.
This study will begin enrolling subjects at the end of 2005 and will
be announced on multiple websites at that time. The goal of this study
is to perform a collaborative multi-center trial by adult and pediatric
rheumatologists and neurologists implementing newly defined disease
activity and damage measures in childhood and adult inflammatory myopathy
to examine the efficacy of an investigational biologic agent. This
trial will define the disease activity and damage measures and definitions
of improvement established by IMACS, thereby enhancing future myositis
research and the conduct of clinical trials in IIM. Through the study
of this biologic agent we will seek to elucidate the determinants of
disease response and non-response in juvenile and adult IIM and gain
insight into the pathogenesis of these enigmatic autoimmune syndromes.