School Absence Among Children With Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis: A National Matched Comparison Study.

OBJECTIVE

This study compares rates of school absence (SA) for all children with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) attending public Danish schools to peers both before and after JIA diagnosis. Further, we aimed to investigate the role of socioeconomic status (SES) on the possible association.

METHODS

We performed a register-based matched cohort study. We included all children attending public Danish schools between 2010 and 2019 diagnosed with JIA, and compared them to their schoolmates. Rates of differentiated and total SA both before and after JIA diagnosis were compared. In the primary study we included children diagnosed with JIA after starting school, whereas the secondary study included only children diagnosed before starting school.

RESULTS

We included 786 children with JIA and 3908 matched controls in the primary study and 382 children with JIA and 1910 matched controls in the secondary. Our primary study showed higher rates of sickness SA and total SA from 3 years before diagnosis and the following 5 years after diagnosis among children with JIA. After diagnosis, children with JIA also had significantly more legal (planned) SA. In the secondary study, we found that children diagnosed with JIA before starting school had significantly more SA (both sickness SA and legal school SA) up to grade 8. In both studies, children from low SES backgrounds, both with and without JIA, had the highest rates of SA, although no difference in the association between JIA and SA across SES groups was found.

CONCLUSION

Children with JIA had more sickness and legal absence from school.