The present study is comprehensive analysis of clinical features of Chinese IMNM patients with anti-SRP autoantibodies, including those with and without ILD. The present study’s findings can be summarized as follows: (1) the frequency of anti-SRP autoantibody in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathy was 8.5% (23/271); (2) ILD is frequently observed in anti-SRP IMNM patients (11/22) from this Chinese cohort, and (3) complicated ILD (odds ratio, 3.8) was a risk factor for bad outcomes.
Previous studies reported that frequency of anti-SRP autoantibody was 5–10% in patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathy 14–16. The frequency of anti-SRP autoantibody in our present study (8.5%) was similar to the previous studies.
The age of onset of IMNM patients is reported usually around 50 and mainly affects females 17. Most patients have muscle weakness, which affects the lower limbs most severely 11 and markedly elevated serum CK levels 15,18,19. All those features are consistent with our study. Pinal-Fernandez et al. reported very high serum muscle enzyme levels with a mean peak creatine kinase of 6272 IU/L in anti-SRP IMNM patients 11. In line with this report, we observed median pre-treatment serum CK values of 7197 IU/L in our cohort.
In myopathy patients with anti-SRP autoantibody, the frequency of ILD has been considered low 20. In 1990, Targoff reported only one of 10 patients with anti-SRP had interstitial fibrosis, determined either by chest radiograph reading or by the report of the referring physician 15. Similarly, in a Mayo Clinic’s series, ILD was not reported in 54 patients with autoimmune SRP myopathy 17. In contrast, ILD was observed in 19% of the anti-SRP group by Watanabe 21, supporting another recent analysis of 100 inflammatory myopathy patients with anti-SRP antibody showing that ILD was present in 13% patients 8. In these patients, the major CT findings are ground glass attenuation which is commonly bilateral and symmetrical with subpleural predominance, irregular linear, reticular opacities and traction bronchiectasis. However, the pathological findings of the lungs have not been described in detail. In rare cases, ILD with anti-SRP-positive myopathy may be severe requiring lung transplantation 22.
Since most previous reports have focused on muscle features, the clinical characteristic of ILD were not well known in patients with anti-SRP autoantibody. Here, we report histologic features of one lung specimen obtained from anti-SRP IMNM patient with ILD: fibroblastic proliferation of alveolar septum and infiltration of lymphocytes. Of note, ILD is more frequently observed in anti-SRP IMNM Chinese patients (50% in our study), and was considered as a risk factor for bad outcomes.
During recent years, more than 15 myositis-specific autoantibodies have been identified. These antibodies may be associated with distinct clinical phenotypes. Some are considered to be positively correlated with ILD, such as anti-synthetase autoantibodies and anti-MDA5 (often rapidly progressive). Among the 23 SRP antibody positive patients in our cohort, we only reported one patient with a diagnosis of Sjogren’s syndrome with positive anti-SSA and anti-SSB autoantibodies. The comparative clinical features of anti-SRP IMNM patients with and without ILD showed no difference in other antibodies that maybe associated with ILD including anti-synthetase autoantibodies, anti-MDA5, and anti-Ro-52. Therefore, ILD in the 11 patients we reported was most likely associated with anti-SRP antibody. In previous reports, anti-SRP myositis patients may also have cardiac involvement, including cardiac rhythm or conduction abnormalities as well as cardiac insufficiency in 13%-16% 21,23,24. However, we did not observe obvious cardiac involvement in this anti-SRP-positive Chinese cohort.
According to the ENMC 2017 guideline 25, first line treatment remains corticosteroids and a steroid-sparing agent. AZA is the preferred agent with a dose of 3mg/kg. Intravenous immunoglobulins may also be needed. In our study, the patients received combination therapy with MPred and a steroid-sparing agent (70%), or triple therapy with MPred, IVIG, and a steroid-sparing agent (26%). AZA was the most commonly used steroid-sparing agent (83%). Among the 21 anti-SRP-positive patients followed up for at least 2 years, only 10 (48%) returned to at least near-full strength 11. Muscle lesions have been demonstrated to be generally resistant to treatment with corticosteroid and immunosuppressants 26. However, in our cases without ILD, immunosuppressive therapy was effective, resulting in good outcome in 90% of this subgroup. Although, there are few reports on the treatment for ILD in the setting of SRP antibodies, the improvement of chest radiological findings after corticosteroid therapy and intravenous immunoglobulin therapy was reported in a case report with three cases 27. Here, we demonstrated relatively poor outcomes for those patients with ILD through Kaplan-Meier analysis. Treatments other than corticosteroids, immunosuppressive agents, and IVIG should be evaluated. Rituximab as B cell depletion therapy 9 or tofacitinib as a Janus kinase inhibitor 28 might be an effective and often life-saving therapy for anti-SRP IMNM patients with ILD.
Regarding overall prognosis, Kao et al. 14 described that the 5-year cumulative survival rate in the SRP-positive polymyositis patients (86%) was not significantly different from SRP-negative polymyositis patients (75%). These results may indicate that the prognosis of the SRP-positive polymyositis patients is not worse compared with the SRP-negative polymyositis patients. In the present study, there were two deaths among the 23 anti-SRP IMNM patients. Both patients were complicated by ILD. However, cumulative survival among the SRP-positive with ILD group was not significantly different (log rank p = 0.13) from that in the SRP-positive group without ILD.
There were several study limitations. 1) Since muscle weakness is the predominant clinical feature in patients with anti-SRP IMNM, documenting the degree of weakness is a critical aspect of managing these patients. The MRC scale or the transformed Kendall scale has a ceiling effect, such that some patients with weakened strength may still be scored as having normal power (an MRC score of 5). A hand-held muscle strength dynamometer might be an additional choice over using the MRC scale alone 11. 2) the other limitation is the patient population. Because this study was conducted in a single center, generalization of our results to other populations may not be warranted.