A Promising Future for Understanding and Treating Inflammatory Myopathies

The inflammatory myopathies (IMs) are a class of disorders characterized by generalized muscular weakness and certain inflammatory abnormalities in pathologic studies of muscle. The principal IMs are inclusion body myositis (IBM), dermatomyositis (DM), and polymyositis (PM). Necrotizing myopathy is an additional category, and other acquired myopathies with inflammation are best classified currently as nonspecific myositis. IBM and DM are well defined clinically, but the classification and clinical diagnosis of PM, necrotizing myopathy, and nonspecific myositis are less certain. …