[Juvenile dermatomyositis: clinical, immunologic, and therapeutic characteristics].

Although dermatomyositis is a rare disease in infancy, it involves several systems and tissues throughout the body causing death or serious disabilities at the musculoesquelethal level. The increased incidence of vasculitis and other characteristics in children make their clinical presentation different from the adult, which could modify the diagnostic criteria, course disease and treatment of the child. We analyze the clinical experience at Hospital Infantil de Mexico Federico Gomez with 21 children studied during a period of ten years. All patients fulfilled the Bohan and Peters diagnostic criteria and 91% of them responded to treatment. At the present time 52% are in remission without treatment, 37.7% improved with treatment, 4.5% with little response to treatment and 4.7% have died because of infections.