[Adult oligoarthritis with antinuclear factors. A new syndrome, relations with juvenile oligoarthritis].

We report an original form of chronic inflammatory arthritis in 14 young adults, mainly females: an oligoarthritis with antinuclear antibodies. A first group of 10 patients, 9 females and one male, over 17 year-old, mean age 25, presented with monoarthritis or oligoarthritis of the knees, and less frequently of the wrist or elbow. Arthritis was chronic, recurrent, not destructive nor incapacitating. Rheumatoid factor was absent, and the only biologic abnormality was positive ANA at a significant rate. No patient was typed for HLA DR5. No other clinical or biological symptom appeared during a mean follow-up period of 5.5 years (6 mo-30 yrs). The patients have been totally free of any ocular symptoms. The benignity of the disease and its good prognosis must be underlined. Another group of 4 adult women had a similar inflammatory disease, which started during childhood: the biological and clinical spectrum was found quite similar in both groups, except for uveitis which occurred only in the later. Most subsets of juvenile arthritis have counterpart in adulthood, except for the pauciarticular subset with AAN. The cases herein described could fill the gap, the only difference with the juvenile onset form being the absence of uveitis. Thus, even if our observations of oligoarthritis with ANA in young women are the equivalent of the pauciarticular form in young girls, ocular involvement remains specific of childhood.