Clinical and pathological features of immune-mediated necrotising myopathies in a single-centre muscle biopsy cohort

OBJECTIVE: Immune-mediated necrotising myopathy (IMNM) is a subset of idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM) characterized by significantly elevated creatine kinase level, muscle weakness and predominant muscle fibre necrosis in muscle biopsy. This study aimed to investigate the clinical and pathological characteristics of patients with IMNM in a single-centre muscle biopsy cohort. METHODS: A total of 860 patients who had muscle biopsy reports in our centre from May 2008 to December 2017 were enrolled in this study. IMNM was diagnosed according to the 2018 European Neuromuscular Centre (ENMC) clinicopathological diagnostic criteria for IMNM. RESULTS: The muscle biopsy cohort consisted of 531 patients with IIM (61.7%), 253 patients with non-IIM (29.4%), and 76 undiagnosed patients (8.8%). IIM cases were classified as IMNM (68[7.9%]), dermatomyositis (346[40.2%]), anti-synthetase syndrome (82[9.5%]), polymyositis (32[3.7%]), and sporadic inclusion body myositis (3[0.3%]). Limb girdle muscular dystrophy (LGMD) 2B and lipid storage myopathy (LSM) are the two most common non-IIM disorders in our muscle biopsy cohort. IMNM patients had a higher onset age (41.57 ± 14.45 vs 21.66 ± 7.86 and 24.56 ± 10.78, p < .0001), shorter duration (21.79 ± 26.01 vs 66.69 ± 67.67 and 24.56 ± 10.78, p < .0001), and more frequent dysphagia (35.3% vs. 3.4 and 6.3%, p = .001) than LGMD 2B and LSM patients. Muscle biopsy from IMNM showed more frequent muscle fibre necrosis (95.6% vs 72.4 and 56.3%, p < .0001), overexpression of major histocompatibility complex-I on sarcolemma (83.8% vs 37.9 and 12.9%, p < .0001), and CD4(+) T cell endomysia infiltration (89.7% vs 53.6 and 50%, p < .0001) compared with those from LGMD 2B and LSM patients. CONCLUSIONS: It is easy to distinguish IMNM from other IIM subtypes according to clinical symptoms and myositis specific antibodies profiles. However, distinguishing IMNM from disorders clinically similar to non-IIM needs combined clinical, serological and pathological features. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12891-022-05372-z.