What causes juvenile rheumatoid arthritis?
Like adult rheumatoid arthritis, JRA is an autoimmune disease, which means the body’s immune system attacks its own healthy cells and tissues. JRA is considered to be a multifactorial condition. Multifactorial inheritance means that “many factors” are involved in causing a health problem. The factors are usually both genetic and environmental, where a combination of genes from both parents, in addition to unknown environmental factors, produce the trait or condition. Often one gender (either males or females) is affected more frequently than the other in multifactorial traits. Multifactorial traits do recur in families because they are partly caused by genes. A group of genes on chromosome 6 codes for the HLA antigens play a major role in susceptibility and resistance to disease. Specific HLA antigens influence the development of many common disorders. Some of these disorders, like JRA, are autoimmune related and inherited in a multifactorial manner. When a child has the specific HLA a
