A sample size of at least 50 mothers of children with JIA was calculated based on standard deviations with 95% confidence intervals as used in previous studies using the PSI to calculate maternal stress in other chronic childhood illnesses.[14] Correlations were sought between joint count, CHAQ, Physician and Parent Global VAS and PSI using Spearman’s r correlation coefficient. Level of significance was set at 0.05 and all tests were two-tailed t-tests were used to compare the maternal stress scores with those of mothers of children with other chronic childhood illnesses. PSI scores were expressed as means and 95% CI. Complete data was obtained

for 50 mothers and children. The children Selleckchem HM781-36B had a mean age of 6 years (SD ± 2.9 years) and 33 (66%) were female. Twenty-eight (56%) had oligoarticular arthritis, 10 (20%) had polyarticular arthritis, 10 (20%) had systemic onset arthritis and two (4%) had psoriatic arthritis. Twenty-five (50%) were on methotrexate and 10 (20%) were on a biologic therapy (five tozilizumab, four etanercept, one anakinra). Full demographic data for both mothers and children are shown in Table 1. The mean PSI scores for mothers with children with JIA are shown in Table 2 which also shows a comparison to normative and other chronic disease samples. The mean total stress score for mothers of children with LY294002 manufacturer JIA was 235.4 (95% CI 218.5–252.3),

was greater than the mean total stress scores for mothers of normal children 222.8(95% CI 221.4–224.2) and children with other chronic disorders such as insulin-dependent diabetes 218.1 Metalloexopeptidase (95% CI 204.7–231.6) and profound deafness 221.7 (95% CI 206.4–237.0). This reached statistical significance (P < 0.05). A similar trend was also seen in the parent domain. The level of maternal stress was higher in mothers of children with moderate to severe eczema and enteral feeding with mean total stress scores of 259.6 (95% CI 244.9–274.3) and 251.4 (95% CI 242.1–260.7), respectively.

The mean parent domain was greater, 128.7 (95% CI 120.4–136.9) than for mothers of normal children, 123.1 (95% CI 122.2–124.0) and children with deafness, 125.4 (95% CI 114.5–136.3) and diabetes, 117.2 (95% CI 109.7–124.7). This reached statistical significance only when looking at the normative group. There was only data available for the child domain in cystic fibrosis (CF). The mean PSI for the child domain in our study was 110.7 (95% CI 103.2–118.2), which was greater than the child domain reported in CF, PSI 109.4 (95% CI 104–114.5) but was not statistically significant. Seventeen (34%) mothers scored within the clinical range (PSI > 260) for total stress scores, 17 (34%) within the child domain (> 118) and seven (14%) in the parent domain (> 150). Figure 1 shows the proportion of mothers within each subtype of JIA who scored in the clinical range. The mean active joint count of the children with JIA was 1.1 (SD 1.5) with a range of 0–8 joints.