BACKGROUND With the emergence of biotherapies, accurate diagnosis in early arthritis is needed. At this time, there is no biological marker of psoriatic arthritis. OBJECTIVE To test whether antinuclear antibodies (ANA) can be used as a diagnostic tool in psoriatic arthritis (PsA), we evaluated the prevalence of ANA in biologic-naïve PsA patients and in healthy blood donors. METHODS 232 pati...

INTRODUCTION The tumor necrosis factor (TNF-α) was initially described as lymphotoxin or cachectin. The discovery of therapies blocking the action of TNF-α, in 1988, started a new era in the therapy. One of often reported adverse effects related to the use of TNF-α antagonists is induction of the formation of autologous antibodies and antibodies neutralizing anti-TNF drugs. The development of a...

UNLABELLED Despite anti-dsDNA antibodies constitute a wide range of specificities, they are considered as the hallmark for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). OBJECTIVE To identify clinical phenotypes associated with anti-dsDNA antibodies, independently of any clinical diagnoses. METHODS Patients with recent onset of any rheumatic symptoms were screened for antinuclear antibodies (ANA). All...

BACKGROUND For the serological diagnosis of systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases, a two-tier approach starting with sensitive antinuclear antibody (ANA) detection by indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) on HEp-2 cells followed by characterization of positive findings with different immunoassays is recommended. To overcome drawbacks of this approach, we developed a novel technique allowing the co...

RATIONALE Lupus erythematosus panniculitis (LEP) is a rare subset of lupus erythematosus. The incidence of LEP in systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) ranges from 2% to 5%. In the previous literature, most LEP patients were women aged from 20 to 60 years, while pediatric cases were rare, all of whom appeared on their own without SLE.A rare LEP in a 10-year-old female child with severe SLE is pres...

Antidense fine speckles 70 (anti-DFS70) antibodies, a peculiar antinuclear antibody (ANA) pattern by indirect immunofluorescence, is frequently observed in ANA-positive individuals with no evidence of systemic autoimmune rheumatic disease. They may be found in many different inflammatory conditions and in healthy individuals. We herein report a case of an 8-year-old girl presenting with general...

Sera from 735 patients with systemic sclerosis were classified according to antinuclear antibody (ANA) pattern as follows: centromere (25%), homogeneous (26%), fine speckled (21%), fine speckled with nucleolar (14%), coarse speckled (7%), nucleolar only (3%) and cytoplasmic only (3%). Immunoprecipitations using 35S-labelled HeLa cell antigen extract were performed using sera from 374 of these p...

BACKGROUND Systemic sclerosis (SSc) is a connective tissue disorder with excessive fibrosis of the skin and various internal organs. Although SSc is a heterogeneous disease, it has been reported that the particular antinuclear antibodies (ANA) are often indicative of clinical features, disease course and overall severity. OBJECTIVE To clarify the association of clinical and prognostic feature...