Temporomandibular Involvement and Craniofacial Development in Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis

Abstract

Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) is a generalised autoimmune disease, which starts in childhood. JIA is one of the most frequent occurring autoimmune diseases in childhood, and concerns approximately 1 in a 1000 children. JIA is a heterogeneous group of conditions divided into seven different subtypes (see table 1). These different subtypes all should meet some mutual criteria. These criteria are; start of the disease before the sixteenth birthday, arthritis persisting for at least 6 weeks, and all other diagnosis should be excluded. The subtypes are divided based on the clinical symptoms during the first six months of the disease according to inclusion and exclusion criteria. These subtypes all have a different initial presentation, course, and prognosis