ACR 2022 Tweet by TheDaoIndex

An Italian retrospective study of 411 idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) patients applied IMACS criteria to assess the risk of cancer and found significantly more cancers in those at high risk.

Idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) are a heterogenous group of autoimmune conditions with substantial morbidity. EULAR in collaboration with the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) introduced classification criteria for the major subgroups in 2017,1 but there is a need for contemporary real-world data to understand the burden – and well as new ways of assessing disease activity.

Malignancy rivals cardiovascular disease as a leading cause of death in patients with systemic autoimmune diseases. Chronic inflammation and immune dysregulation can drive oncogenesis, while antitumor immune responses can trigger autoimmune phenomena (paraneoplastic syndromes, checkpoint inhibitor-induced rheumatic disease).