Cutaneous polyarteritis nodosa.

Polyarteritis nodosa is a rare vasculitis in children characterized by necrotizing inflammation in small and medium size arteries. It is classified into systemic and cutaneous PAN according to the presence of systemic symptoms or visceral involvement. We describe the case of a 14-year-old girl with cutaneous Polyarteritis nodosa with an atypical clinical presentation.

A preliminary disease severity score for juvenile systemic sclerosis.

Objective: To develop a preliminary disease severity score for juvenile systemic sclerosis (SSc).

Methods: We conducted an evidence- and consensus-based study that included the following 5 phases: 1) prospective collection of data regarding the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients with diffuse juvenile SSc who were followed up for at least 4 years or until death; 2) blinded evaluation of the disease course profiles of these patients by experts in juvenile SSc, so that patient profiles with a defined clinical course could be used as the gold standard for the score validation phase; 3) definition of candidate severity indices to be included in potential scores; 4) selection of the pediatric severity score with the best statistical performance, as determined by its ability to classify individual patients as having improvement or worsening of disease compared with baseline values or the previous evaluation; 5) validation of the efficiency of the selected score in patients with a mild, moderate, or severe disease course and comparison with the Medsger severity score for adults with SSc.

Results: Thirty-five patients classified as having a mild (n = 17), moderate (n = 10), or severe (n = 8) disease course entered the study.