Anti-SAE Identifies a Subtype of Dermatomyositis

Bringing Precision Medicine to Rheumatology

Johns Hopkins includes precision medicine in its mission, a mission that, according to Dr. Albayda, calls for better and better phenotyping.

“In the end, rarity doesn’t make a disease more complex or less understandable,” says Dr. Albayda.

Knowing the phenotype may help clinicians in practice. In the case of anti-SAE dermatomyositis, rheumatologists may expect to find a disease dominated by skin rashes, with sometimes milder muscle and lung disease.

References

1. Betteridge ZE, Gunawardena H, Chinoy H, et al. Clinical and human leucocyte antigen class II haplotype associations of autoantibodies to small ubiquitin-like modifier enzyme, a dermatomyositis-specific autoantigen target, in U.K. Caucasian adult-onset myositis. Ann Rheum Dis. 2009 Oct;68(10):1621–1625.
2. Ge Y, Lu X, Shu X, et al. Clinical characteristics of anti-SAE antibodies in Chinese patients with dermatomyositis in comparison with different patient cohorts. Sci Rep. 2017 Mar 15;7(1):188.
3. Betteridge Z, Tansley S, Shaddick G, et al. Frequency, mutual exclusivity and clinical associations of myositis autoantibodies in a combined European cohort of idiopathic inflammatory myopathy patients. J Autoimmun. 2019 Jul;101:48–55.
4. Albayda J, Mecoli C, Casciola-Rosen L, et al. A North American cohort of anti-SAE dermatomyositis: Clinical phenotype, testing, and review of cases. ACR Open Rheumatol. 2021 May;3(5):287–295.