medwireNews: Researchers have identified the calcium-binding protein S100A12 as a potential predictor of treatment response among patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA).
In an analysis of three cohorts of JIA patients, the 57 patients who achieved an ACRpedi50 response after a median 6.6 months of methotrexate treatment had significantly higher median pretreatment levels of the protein than the 18 patients who did not respond to methotrexate, at 240 versus 150 ng/mL.
Similarly, baseline S100A12 levels were significantly higher among the 66 patients who responded to anti-tumor necrosis factor (TNF) therapy compared with the 22 who did not (308 vs 151 ng/mL), say Dirk Holzinger (Universitätsklinikum Essen, Germany) and study co-investigators.
In a multivariate analysis, adding S100A12 to a model containing known predictors of response – including age, baseline disease activity, and prior treatment – significantly improved the model’s ability to predict patients’ response to TNF inhibitors, but not to methotrexate.
“Further work should be done to identify the ideal clinical scenarios in which this biomarker could best be used,” conclude the researchers in The Journal of Rheumatology.
medwireNews is an independent medical news service provided by Springer Healthcare. © 2018 Springer Healthcare part of the Springer Nature group