Histological heterogeneity in a large clinical cohort of juvenile idiopathic inflammatory myopathy: analysis by myositis autoantibody and pathological features.

AIM: Juvenile idiopathic inflammatory myopathies have been recently reclassified into clinico-serological subgroups. Myopathological correlates of the subgroups are incompletely understood.

METHODS: We studied muscle biopsies from 101 children with clinically and serologically defined juvenile idiopathic inflammatory myopathies from the UK JDM Cohort and Biomarker Study by applying the international JDM score tool, myopathological review and C5b-9 complement analysis.

RESULTS: Autoantibody data were available for 90/101 cases with 18/90 cases positive for anti-TIF1γ, 15/90 anti-NXP2, 11/90 anti-MDA5, 5/90 anti-Mi2 and 6/90 anti-PmScl. JDM biopsy severity scores were consistently low in the anti-MDA5 group, high in the anti-Mi2 group, and widely distributed in the other groups. Biopsies were classified histologically as perifascicular atrophy (22/101), macrophage-rich necrosis (6/101), scattered necrosis (2/101), clustered necrosis (2/101), inflammatory fibre invasion (2/101), chronic myopathic change (1/101), diffuse endomysial macrophage infiltrates (40/101) and minimal change (24/101). MDA5 cases segregated with the minimal change group and showed no capillary C5b-9-deposition. The Mi2 group displayed high severity scores and a tendency towards sarcolemmal complement deposition. NXP2 and TIF1γ groups showed a variety of pathologies with a high proportion of diffuse endomysial macrophage infiltrates and a high proportion of capillary C5b-9 deposition.

CONCLUSION: We have shown that juvenile idiopathic inflammatory myopathies have a spectrum of histopathological phenotypes and show distinct complement attack complex deposition patterns. Both correlate in some cases with the serological subtypes. Most cases do not show typical histological features associated with dermatomyositis (e.g. perifascicular atrophy). In contrast, more than half show relatively mild histopathological changes.