
Performance of the 2023 diagnostic criteria for MOGAD: real-world application in a Chinese multicenter cohort of pediatric and adult patients
Journal: BMC Medicine; January 23, 2025
Author(s): Meng-Ting Cai, Yi Hua, Qi-Lun Lai, Sheng-Yao Su, Chun-Hong Shen, Song Qiao, Yong-Feng Xu, Zhe-Feng Yuan, Yin-Xi Zhang
Evaluating the 2023 diagnostic criteria for MOGAD in children and adults in China
In 2023, new international guidelines were published to improve diagnosis of MOGAD.
This study included 291 adults and children in China who had tested positive for MOGAD-specific antibodies (MOG IgG) and were suspected of having MOGAD. Researchers compared how well the new 2023 criteria identified people with the disease against the earlier diagnostic guidelines of 2018, along with expert clinical judgment. They found that 262 of 291 (90%) people who truly had MOGAD were correctly identified by the 2023 criteria, showing the guidelines work well in routine clinical settings. The criteria worked well for diagnosing both adults and children (that is, sensitivity), though they didn’t work as well in ruling out adults without the disease as definitely not having MOGAD (that is, specificity).
Overall, the older criteria from 2018 worked just about as well as the 2023 criteria, and another set of earlier criteria were more effective at avoiding inaccurately diagnosing people with MOGAD when they didn’t in fact have it.
These findings suggest that the 2023 diagnostic criteria have been useful in everyday practice and generally reliable for diagnosing MOGAD across a broad group of both child and adult patients in China, but their ability to avoid inaccurately people as having MOGAD could be improved.
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