Many parents write to consult about their children’ juvenile ankylosing spondylitis (AS).
Comparing with adult AS, juvenile ankylosing spondylitis is rather
different, as well as its treatment. So what are the characteristics of
juvenile ankylosing spondylitis? Learning about this helps us adopt more
effective treatments for our children.
Comparing with adult ankylosing spondylitis, although juvenile AS has many commons, it has many differences.
1, most patients’ age of onset is between 8 and 16. This disease rarely attack before 8.
2, the positive rate of HLA-B27 can reach to 90%, which is very useful for the diagnosis of this disease.
3, most children patients can experience peripheral arthritis almost in any progression stages, while, for adult patients, there is only 30～60% of peripheral arthritis.
4, 80% of children patients’ onset is begin with peripheral arthritis, and only about 10 percent of children are attacked with waist pain and stiffness. However, in adult patients, the onset with peripheral arthritis and waist pain is about half and half.
5, enthesopathy is much more common on children patients of juvenile ankylosing spondylitis than adult patients.
On the other hand, as 80% of children patients’ onset is begin with peripheral arthritis, sometimes it is likely to confuse juvenile
AS with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. To distinguish these two
diseases, we need to remember the following points.
1, AS more often attacks boy children, while RA more often attacks girl children.
2, most RA children patients don’t have the symptoms of enthesopathy.
3, many patients of AS have the family medical history of this disease, while RA children patients don’t.
These characteristics of juvenile ankylosing
spondylitis help parents and doctors diagnose this disease early so
that not to miss the best treatment opportunity. At the same time,
children needs different consideration for the treatment, because the
most treatment for adult AS has certain side-effects. Traditional
Chinese medicine can be a good choice for children patients, because it
has little side-effects and treat the disease from the root cause, which
is better for patient’s future life.
