We report three cases of pulmonary disease suggesting fibrosis in two familial and one sporadic case. Pulmonary symptoms were associated with various clinical features of systemic inflammation and ...vasculitis involving the skin, and appeared at different ages. A strong interferon signature was found in all three cases. Disease was not responsive to corticosteroids, and lung transplantation was considered for all three subjects at an early age. One of them underwent double-lung transplantation, but she immediately experienced a primary graft dysfunction and died soon after. Recognized causes of familial interstitial lung disease were all excluded. All three subjects had a mutation in the previously described autoinflammatory disease called SAVI (stimulator of interferon genes STING-associated vasculopathy with onset in infancy). These cases emphasize the need to consider this possibility in children and young adults with lung fibrosis after common causes have been ruled out.
The patients, aged between 5 and 12 years, exhibited the phenotypic variability associated with TMEM173-activating mutations,2-4 with lung disease and systemic inflammation being the major features ...in patient 1 (P1) and patient 3 (P3), while in patient 2 (P2) skin involvement was most prominent (Fig 1; see Supplemental Text and Table E1 in this article's Online Repository at www.jacionline.org). Modest and incomplete downregulation of ISG was recently described in splenic B cells of mice treated with tofacitinib, a JAK1/3 inhibitor, with differential signaling effects suggesting currently poorly understood facets of IFN regulation.9 In this regard, our kinetic ex vivo experiments provide insights into the rapid dynamic changes in IFN signaling secondary to JAK1 blockade.
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