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Children with arthritis adapt well to the disease

Posted on: Tuesday, 1 November 2005, 11:07 CST

By Megan Rauscher

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Unlike other rheumatic diseases, systemic juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (SJRA) -- an inflammatory disease affecting numerous joints -- is not associated with thinking impairments or increased social and emotional problems in young patients, suggests a study conducted in Germany.

"This result may support the premise that children and adolescents with SJRA adapt successfully to their chronic disease," Dr. Reinhold Feldmann from University Hospital of Munster told Reuters Health.

As reported in the medical journal Annals of Neurology, Feldmann and colleagues investigated the mental performance and fine motor skills as well as the social abilities of 31 children and adolescents with SJRA and 31 healthy comparison children.

There were no differences in IQ scores between children with SJRA and healthy kids, the investigators report. Both groups performed within the normal limits of intelligence. There were also no between-group differences in memory and learning, attention and fine motor scores.

While the parents of the SJRA subjects reported less social activities than did parents of the control subjects, the social and emotional problem scores were not markedly different between the groups and both were in the normal range, Feldmann and colleagues report.

SOURCE: Annals of Neurology, October 2005.

Source: REUTERS

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