Hispanic Patients With Dermatomyositis Save

JAMA Dermatology has published a review of dermatomyositis (DM), focusing on similar and different manifestations of DM.

DM affects all races, but it has been suggested that racial and ethnic minority patients may have more severe disease and a different autoantibody profile. This analysis characterizes the clinical features and outcomes of DM in Hispanic and non-Hispanic patients.

Medscape's coverage of this review notes Hispanic DM patients may be diagnosed at younger, differ in clinical manifestations, and have a different autoantibody profile.  This retrospective study included 207 DM (79.7% women), of whom 95 were Hispanic and were compared to 112 were non-Hispanics. Serological data were available for few patients (20 and 48 patients, respectively).

Key points included

• Hispanic patients were diagnosed significantly younger than non-Hispanics (mean 48.3 vs 52.4 years; P = .02).
• Hispanic DM had more mechanic's hands (14.7% vs 5.4%), less Gottron sign (31.6% vs 50.9%), less colonoscopy screening (21.1% vs 46.6%; P < .001) and less mycophenolate use(24.2% vs 38.4%; P = .04)
• Not significantly different between cohorts were Malignancies (17.9% vs 9.8%), or mortality rate (2.1% vs 2.7%).