Novel Drug for Arthritis-related Blindness in Children

Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA) is an auto-immune disease that causes joint inflammation. It mainly occurs in children under the age of 16 years and persists for at least six weeks. In the U.K, around 1-2 per 1,000 children are said to be affected with auto-immune disease JIA, an incidence of 1 per 10,000. Females are more affected by the condition. A total of 150,000 children and adolescents have JIA. This condition causes many serious complications including uveitis, inflammation of the middle layer of the eyes, which can eventually lead to blindness.