Hello and welcome to a new series of the Zero to Finals podcast where we're going to be covering

pediatric rheumatology. My name is Tom and in this first episode we're going to be going

through juvenile, idiopathic arthritis. And you can find written notes on this topic at

zero tofininals.com slash

jIA or in the rheumatology section of the zero definals pediatrics book. So let's get straight

into it. Juvenile idiopathic arthritis or jIA refers to a condition that affects children

and adolescence and causes autoimmune inflammation in the

joints. It's diagnosed when there is arthritis without any other cause lasting more than six weeks

in a patient under the age of 16. It's also known as juvenile chronic arthritis and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis.

The key features of inflammatory arthritis are joint pain, joint swelling and joint stiffness.

There are a number of different subtypes of juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

Each one has individual characteristics and is associated

with different serology, which are different blood test results. It's worth remembering five key

subtypes, which are systemic JIA, polyarticular JIA, oligoart JIA, enthesitis-related arthritis, and juvenile psoriatic arthritis.

And we're going to go through each of these in more detail.

First, let's start with systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis.

This is also known as Stills disease. It is a systemic illness

that can occur throughout childhood in boys and girls. It's classified as an idiopathic

inflammatory condition where there's inflammation in the body without a clear cause.

Typical features are a subtle salmon pink rash,

high swinging fevers,

enlarged lymph nodes, weight loss,

...