Bone Abstracts

Autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) is an immune-mediated chronic inflammatory disease of the liver of unknown origin, that suddenly appears in previously healthy, normally growing children. Standard therapy is long-term prednisone, aimed at avoiding progression to cirrhosis. Considering the inflammatory origin of the disease and the long-term steroid therapy, negative consequences for bone health can be expected, but no data on this complication have been published until now.<p cl...

We performed a prospective study on 440 young patients (aged 3–20 years), affected by various chronic diseases (cystic fibrosis; juvenile idiopathic arthritis; nephrotic syndrome; systemic lupus erythematosus; Duchenne muscular dystrophy; autoimmune hepatitis; transplants; etc.), with periodical bone mineral density (BMD) evaluations with DXA, for 3–14 years (7.8±6.2).266 patients were on long-term treatment with glucocorticoids (GCs); amo...