Rheumatology News July 10, 2018
REPORTING FROM THE EULAR 2018 CONGRESS
AMSTERDAM – New classification criteria for antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)–associated vasculitides have been drafted and now need formal review by the American College of Rheumatology and the European League Against Rheumatism before they can be put into practice.
These draft criteria – which are based on data collected via the Diagnostic and Classification Criteria in Vasculitis (DCVAS) observational study – focus on how to classify three main types of ANCA-associated vasculitis: granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA), eosinophilic granulomatosis with polyangiitis (EGPA), and microscopic polyangiitis (MPA).
“The old criteria were actually produced in the early 1990s and since then we’ve had further thinking about the different subtypes of systemic vasculitis,” explained Dr. Robson of the University of the West of England in Bristol.
Dr. Robson emphasized that all of these classification criteria were to be used only after exclusion of other possible causes of vasculitis, such as infection, malignancy, or other autoimmune diseases such as inflammatory bowel disease, and a “diagnosis of small- or medium-vessel vasculitis has been made.”
These criteria are to help classify into the subtypes of vasculitis “primarily for the purpose of clinical trials,” she said. “The next steps are review by the EULAR and ACR committee, and only on final approval will these criteria be ready to use.”
No comments:
Post a Comment