TY - JOUR T1 - Serum Interleukin 18 as a Diagnostic Remission Criterion in Systemic Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis JF - The Journal of Rheumatology JO - J Rheumatol SP - 2328 LP - 2330 DO - 10.3899/jrheum.140025 VL - 41 IS - 11 AU - MASAKI SHIMIZU AU - YASUO NAKAGISHI AU - AKIRA YOSHIDA AU - AKIHIRO YACHIE Y1 - 2014/11/01 UR - http://www.jrheum.org/content/41/11/2328.abstract N2 - To the Editor:With the development of new therapeutic agents and combination treatment strategies, more children with systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis (sJIA) can experience protracted periods of low disease activity levels and, in some cases, complete disease quiescence. These advances create a need for the development of validated criteria that precisely describe the clinical state of disease quiescence.We previously reported that serum interleukin 18 (IL-18) levels in patients with sJIA were extremely high during the active phase and remained significantly elevated even when other markers of disease activity normalized1. We also reported that serum IL-18 levels at birth in a healthy infant born to a woman with active adult-onset Still’s disease were markedly increased, and this increase persisted for about 1 month2. These findings indicate that it takes several months for extremely elevated serum IL-18 levels to normalize under physiological conditions.In our study, we serially measured serum IL-18 levels in 11 patients with sJIA (age 10.2 ± 7.6 yrs, male:female = 3:8) until they had relapsed or achieved remission to investigate the kinetics of serum IL-18 levels from the active phase to remission. Further, we investigated the correlation between serum IL-18 and IL-6 levels in these patients. Among 11 patients, 4 patients were enrolled in our previous study1, while 7 patients … Address correspondence to Dr. M. Shimizu, Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, Institute of Medical, Pharmaceutical, and Health Sciences, Kanazawa University, 13-1 Takaramachi, Kanazawa 920-8641, Japan. E-mail: shimizum{at}staff.kanazawa-u.ac.jp ER -