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To apply gene expression profiling to the study of peripheral blood mononuclear cells from patients with inflammatory myopathies, in order to provide insight into disease pathogenesis and identify potential biomarkers associated with disease activity.

We used Affymetrix whole‐genome microarrays to measure the expression of ∼38,500 genes in 65 blood and 15 muscle samples from 44 patients with dermatomyositis (DM), polymyositis (PM), inclusion body myositis (IBM), myasthenia gravis, or genetically determined myopathies and from 12 healthy volunteers. In 9 patients, 2 samples were obtained at different time points, when disease was either active or improving, and these paired blood samples were also compared. Bioinformatics techniques were used to identify genes with significant differential expression among diagnostic categories and in relation to disease activity. We corroborated …