ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neurol.
Sec. Neuromuscular Disorders and Peripheral Neuropathies
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fneur.2025.1581206
The Clinical Value of Percentages of Lymphocytes and Monocyte-tolymphocyte Ratio in Differentiating Immune-mediated Necrotizing Myopathy from Dermatomyositis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China
- 2Department of Neurology, Tongji Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, Hebei Province, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Objective Immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy (IMNM) and dermatomyositis (DM) represent distinct subtypes of idiopathic inflammatory myopathies. While both conditions share clinical manifestations including muscle weakness and inflammatory infiltrates on muscle biopsy, their pathophysiological characteristics differ significantly. This study investigates the clinical utility of hematological inflammatory biomarkers in differentiating these two entities.In this retrospective analysis, we compared complete blood count parameters from 27 IMNM patients, 14 DM patients, and 85 healthy controls (HC). Demographic characteristics, clinical presentations, and hematological indices including neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), monocyteto-lymphocyte ratio (MLR), and platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR) were analyzed.Myalgia and skin rash more frequently were observed in DM group compared with the IMNM group. IMNM patients exhibited significantly higher serum creatine kinase and lactate d0.2815ehydrogenase levels. Red blood cell distribution width (RDW), monocyte counts, and MLR were elevated in IMNM patients when compared with HC. DM patients showed significantly increased neutrophil percentages, monocyte percentages, monocyte counts, NLR, MLR, and PLR, as well as decreased lymphocyte percentages and counts, relative to HC. When directly comparing DM and IMNM, DM patients had lower lymphocyte percentages and counts, along with higher NLR and MLR. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis revealed that lymphocyte percentage and MLR had moderate predictive value for differentiating IMNM from DM, with areas under the curve (AUC) of 0.709 and 0.7487, respectively.Conclusion RDW and MLR in IMNM, and NLR, MLR, and PLR in DM represent accessible and cost-effective biomarkers for assessing inflammation. Lymphocyte percentage and MLR may serve as inexpensive and readily available supplementary markers to distinguish IMNM from DM.
Keywords: Immune-mediated necrotizing myopathy, Dermatomyositis, Monocyte-tolymphocyte ratio, Percentages of lymphocytes, Red blood cell distribution width
Received: 21 Feb 2025; Accepted: 05 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Ma, Huajie and Ge. 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: Xue Ma, Department of Neurology, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi’an, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.