Juvenile chronic arthritis in black and Indian South African children.

Although juvenile chronic arthritis (JCA) has been studied extensively in Whites in Western countries, very few data exist on JCA in children in developing countries and particularly in Africa. Accordingly, a retrospective study of 60 Black and Indian children with JCA was undertaken. The main findings were predominance of JCA of polyarticular onset with a relatively low occurrence of JCA of pauci-articular onset, a high prevalence of positive rheumatoid factor tests and a very low number of patients positive for antinuclear factor, and an equal overall sex ratio (however, there was a preponderance of males in the subgroup with JCA involving only 2 - 4 joints). Moreover, the vast majority of patients initially had a low haemoglobin concentration, a normal white cell count, an elevated erythrocyte sedimentation rate and a positive antistreptolysin O titre. The main differences between Black and Indian South African children with JCA and White children with the disease in Europe and North American appear to be the high prevalences of polyarticular onset and seropositivity, the equal sex ratio and the absence of a specific subgroup with pauci-articular onset and a positive antinuclear factor test.