EDITORIAL article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Disorders : Autoimmune Disorders
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2025.1639383
This article is part of the Research TopicNew Insights into the Pathogenesis of Idiopathic Inflammatory MyopathyView all 5 articles
Advances in Understanding of Myositis Pathogenesis
Provisionally accepted
- University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, United States
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Over the last several years, application of these newer tools and technologies have begun coming to fruition. Advancements include the characterization of K 2p 2.1, a potassium channel that may regulate influx of inflammatory cells into diseased muscle tissue (1), and provocative studies demonstrating the ability of autoantibodies to penetrate cells and inhibit key cellular processes impacting transcriptional regulation and downstream signaling pathways (2). In this special section focusing on the pathogenesis of IIM, the brief compendium of manuscripts highlight additional avenues of discovery that have advanced our understanding of aberrant immune responses and metabolic profiles characterizing different disease subtypes. For example, Wang et. al. present data demonstrating the ability of various byproducts of glycerophospholipid metabolism and fatty acid oxidation to distinguish different antibody subgroups of dermatomyositis, high versus low disease activity, and the presence versus absence of interstitial lung disease. Demonstrating the complementary application of single cell RNA sequencing of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), the analyses presented by Ding et. al. provide compelling insight to differences in immune landscape (cellular profile, cytokine signaling pathways) and metabolic derangements between patients with antisynthetase antibody-positive dermatomyositis and anti-MDA5 antibody-positive dermatomyositis. In a different approach, Bolko et. al. use single molecule array (SIMOA) and ELISA to characterize Type I interferon profiles in different autoantibody subsets of dermatomyositis-with results demonstrating subset-dependent correlations of IFNα and/or IFNβ with disease activity. Finally, Gao et. al. examine clinical, immunological, and demographic risk factors associated with risk of Pneumocystis jirovecii infection (documented by metagenomic sequencing) and poor outcome in MDA5 antibody-positive dermatomyositis. Collectively, these studies demonstrate the power of different omics approaches in elucidating pathogenically-relevant pathways in IIM and offer hope of defining newer, desperately needed therapeutic targets.
Keywords: Myositis, Pathogenesis, interferon, RNA sequencing, Autoantibody
Received: 02 Jun 2025; Accepted: 04 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ascherman. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Dana P. Ascherman, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, United States
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