The Systemic JIA Foundation recently held its NextGen Conference. The conference, which had over 350 participants, featured three days of presentations and discussions around a few core ideas:
- There are cases of SJIA without arthritis and arthritis should not be required for diagnosis of SJIA.
- Different phenotypes of refractory SJIA (with arthritis or lung/liver involvement).
- The use of IL18 as a biomarker for disease & trials.
- Planning for clinical trials for both refractory SJIA and MAS.
One of the sessions covered Bone Marrow Transplantation in refractory SJIA. The last session focused on SJIA-LD, with a talk about use of lung ultrasound to diagnose/track lung disease and a new hypothesis for SJIA-LD – the Cytokine Plasticity Hypothesis.
The participation of the FDA in many of the sessions, with comments and feedback, added a whole other dimension – enabling us as a community to go from discussion to planning of clinical trials.
Weren’t able to attend?
Rewatch or view all of the ground-breaking sessions from NextGen 2022 through the virtual conference platform. All of the content is now available to view until the end of August. Anyone can register free (though the conference is over) to gain free access to conference videos for the next 6 months – including patients & parents!