[Neurologic involvement in juvenile rheumatoid arthritis]

The neurologic complication seen in children with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) has hardly been studied for which therefore its prevalence is unknown. Some of the clinical manifestations surrounding this event have been studied and have been divided into the following two groups: cervical articular spinal disease and extra-articular manifestations, more commonly seen in adults, the atlas-axoidal subluxation and the neuropathies. A group of 213 children diagnosed as having JRA according to the criteria setforth by the American Association of Rheumatology and followed by the Department of Internal Medicine of the National Institute of Pediatrics, 10 patients were found to have neurologic symptomatology (4.6%). Their arthritis was studied as well as their association with activity data and seropositivity. We found 6 female and 4 male patients with neurologic manifestations; their ages ranged from 7 to 14 years. Six of them were diagnosed with sero-positive polyarticular JRA and the other four with polyarticular sero-negative. All patients showed some activity and the appearance of the neurologic complications ranged between two months and seven years. No correlation was found between the beginning of the arthritis and the neurologic symptomatology, their sex or the type of arthritis. Seven of the cases showed peripheral neuropathy. Two cases had atlas-atloid subluxation and another child showed having cervical column inflammation with a rheumatoid pannus.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)