Background: Juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) is a chronic autoimmune condition of unknown etiology. JIA combine with joint pain and inflammation that affects children who are less 16 years of age and continue more 6 weeks. JIA is a chronic inflammatory disease resulting in joints arthritis, pain and deformities. Disturbances in the posture may occur before deformities in patients with JIA. In some cases, pain can also lead to postural deterioration. Postural control is the ability to maintain equilibrium in a gravitational field by keeping or returning the center of body mass over its base of support.

Objectives: The first purposes of this study was to assessed postural problems in patients with JIA and compared with healthy peers. The other objective was to examine the pain relationship with postural problems.

Methods: 19 patients with JIA aged 5–17 years (13 girls and 6boys) diagnosed according to ILAR classification criteria and 19 healthy controls were enrolled in this cross-sectional study. “PostureScreen Mobile®” was used to evaluate static posture, “11-point Numeric Analogue Scale (NRS)” was used to evaluate the pain (during rest, activity and exercise). The PostureScreen Mobile® an application facilitates the assessment of posture in a variety of settings. Anterior (Head, Shoulders, Ribcage, Hips) and lateral translation (Head, Shoulders, Hips, Knees) were recorded and calculated as a total score for anterior and lateral. For statistical analysis SPSS Version 21.0 program was used.

Results: The mean age and body mass index of patients and healthy control were 10.79±3.59 and 10.68±2.86 years, 17.05±3.88, and 18.50±2.49 kg/m², respectively. The mean of NRS-rest, activity and exercise scores were 1.18±1.42, 3±2.64 and 1.91±2.02, respectively. As a result of postural assessment for patients and healthy control, the mean of anterior translation scores was significantly higher in patients with JIA than healthy control (p=0.014) (table 1). Two significant correlations with NRS-rest between hip anterior translation (r=0.375, p=0.029) and ribcage anterior translation (r=-0.534, p=0.027) were found.

Conclusions: We found that children with JIA have minimal postural problems according to their healthy peers. At the same time, pain during rest is associated with anterior postural deterioration. Therefore in future researches, translations in the posture should be evaluated comprehensively in children with JIA for larger sample size. If it is not intervened in the early period, it may lead to overloading of joints and increased pain in later periods.

Disclosure of Interest: None declared