ABSTRACT
The idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (11M) represent a group of diseases of unknown cause in which muscle injury results from inflammation. The major categories of 11M include polymyositis (PM), dermatomyositis (DM), myositis in overlap with malignancy or another connective tissue disease (CTD), childhood myositis (most commonly dermatomyositis), and inclusion body myositis (IBM). Although proximal muscle weakness is the most common symptom of lIM, the clinical features at disease presentation and during the course of the illness vary considerably from patient to patient. The presence of a variety of rashes and cutaneous findings separates the patient with an inflammatory myopathy into the clinical subset of dermatomyositis.
