Therapeutic preparations of polyspecific IgG obtained from plasma pools of a large number of normal donors (IVIg) express anti-idiotypic activity against a wide spectrum of natural and disease-associated autoantibodies. The present study investigated the origin of anti-idiotypic activity against autoantibodies to factor VIII. The neutralizing activity of pools of IgG against patients' anti-fact...

Human anti-IgG hinge (HAH) autoantibodies constitute a class of immunoglobulins that recognize cryptic epitopes in the hinge region of antibodies exposed after proteolytic cleavage, but do not bind to the intact IgG counterpart. Detailed molecular characterizations of HAH autoantibodies suggest that they are, in some cases, distinct from natural autoantibodies that arise independent of antigeni...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to investigate the frequency of autoantibodies with mimicking specificity by using the dilution technique, to assess the usefulness of the combination of the dilution technique and red blood cell (RBC) phenotyping, and to establish a pre-transfusion testing algorithm in patients with warm autoantibodies. METHODS Serum samples from 71 patients with warm aut...

PURPOSE This study investigated the prevalence of islet autoantibodies in children and adults with T1DM according to their age and the duration of disease. METHODS We measured the levels of islet autoantibodies, including antiglutamic acid decarboxylase antibody (anti-GAD Ab), and combined these with anthropometric measurements and laboratory tests of 137 patients newly diagnosed with T1DM du...

OBJECTIVE This study aimed to explore the effects of diet-induced hypercholesterolemia (HC) on the production of G protein-coupled receptor autoantibodies and to elucidate the potential mechanisms involved. MATERIALS AND METHODS Male Wistar rats were fed a normal or high-cholesterol diet for 8 weeks. Cardiac function, autoantibodies against G protein-coupled receptors, the beat frequency of n...

A peptide corresponding to the sequence 169-193 of the second extracellular loop of the human muscarinic acetylcholine receptor-2 was used as an antigen to screen sera from patients with idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM, n = 36) and healthy blood donors (HBD, n = 40). The sera from 14 patients with DCM (38.8%) and 3 HBD (7.5%) recognized the muscarinic receptor peptide at dilutions varyin...

Pemphigus is a severe autoimmune-blistering disease of the skin and mucous membranes caused by autoantibodies reducing desmosomal adhesion between epithelial cells. Autoantibodies against the desmosomal cadherins desmogleins (Dsgs) 1 and 3 as well as desmocollin 3 were shown to be pathogenic, whereas the role of other antibodies is unclear. Dsg3 interactions can be directly reduced by specific ...

OBJECTIVE To compare the sensitivity and specificity of luciferase immunoprecipitation (LIPS) with radioimmunoprecipitation (RIP) for the measurement of autoantibodies to the type 1 diabetes autoantigens glutamic acid decarboxylase 65 (GAD65) and insulinoma-associated protein (IA)-2beta. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Sera from 49 type 1 diabetic patients and 100 nondiabetic control subjects fro...

Infection with Helicobacter pylori has been associated with induction of autoantibodies that cross-react with the gastric mucosa. There have been discordant reports as to whether or not these autoantibodies arise due to molecular mimicry between H. pylori and host cell antigens on parietal cells. In this study, we investigated whether molecular mimicry by H. mustelae causes autoantibodies in in...