Dear Colleagues,

Inflammatory myopathies (myositis) are one of the autoimmune diseases, affecting the skeletal muscle primarily. Patients with myositis often have also extramuscular features, such as dermatitis, arthritis, interstitial lung disease (ILD), myocarditis and gastroenteropathy. Out of those extramuscular features, ILD is the most crucial complication because ILD is the leading cause of death in myositis, and develops frequently, in approximately half of patients with myositis. Thus, we need to evaluate and manage ILD appropriately in patients with myositis to prevent progression of ILD leading to fatal outcome.

Clinical characteristics of myositis-associated ILD (myositis-ILD), such as clinical course, patterns of lung imaging on high-resolution computed tomography, response to immunosuppressive therapy and prognosis, are highly variable among patients with myositis. A useful mean of resolving the complexity of these clinical features in myositis-ILD is the measurement of myositis-specific autoantibodies (MSAs). MSA are detected in over 60% of patients with myositis. Each MSA is closely related to relatively homogenous clinical features associated with myositis. The measurement of MSA is highly useful and important for support of making a diagnosis, prediction of prognosis, and organization of therapeutic strategies. However, these clinical characteristics are not always consistent among patients with a concordant MSA. That might be attributed to several factors including genetic factors, races, and aging. We need to provide a personalized medicine to individual patients with myositis-ILD based on the stratification of prognosis.

In the past decade, there is emerging evidence regarding myositis-ILD. We need to better understand how to predict clinical outcome in individual patients with myositis-ILD because physicians have a responsibility to improve quality of daily living and prognosis in those patients. Therefore, the journal Medicina is launching this Special Issue.

We encourage you and your co-workers to submit your articles reporting on this topic. Reviews regarding clinical aspect in myositis-ILD, in particular, articles providing an up-to-date overview of the use of biomarkers in prediction and management are particularly welcome. In addition, we warmly invite you to submit articles reporting on basic molecules contributed to development of myositis- ILD, and evidence and expectations from innovative molecular therapeutics.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Medicina is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Myositis
• Interstitial lung disease
• Phenotype
• Prediction
• Biomarkers
• Prognosis
• Personalized medicine