Healthcare providers use antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) to screen and diagnose patients with autoimmune diseases. In the recent years, commercial multiplex ANA kits have emerged as a convenient and fast diagnostic method. Diagnostic testing should follow sequenced algorithms: initial screen followed by specific antibody analysis. Second-level testing as an initial screen for autoimmune disease i...

INTRODUCTION Anti-TNFα therapy has been effective in the treatment of patients with refractory psoriatic arthritis (PSA). However, the risk of developing autoantibodies commonly found in rheumatic diseases in PSA patients undergoing this therapy is not clear. OBJECTIVE To evaluate the induction of specific autoantibodies after anti-TNFα therapy in PSA patients. PATIENTS AND METHODS Serum sa...

fifty-seven patients suffering from systemic lupus erythematosus with different clinical features were studied from various aspects of immunological abnormalities, including anti-nuclear antibodies; anti-dna; anti-sm (smith's antigen); and, other extractable nuclear antigens. the tests employed were microhemagglutination, counter immunoelecterphoresis, and radio immunoassay (ria). the compariso...

Methods In this cross-sectional study, patients who had been followed up for at least a 6 month-period were recruited from different centers and registered thorough a webbased registry. Patients were grouped according to their ANA positivity. Clinical and demographic features were compared between ANA positive and negative groups. The results were explored by univariate and multivariate regress...

BACKGROUND The detection of autoantibodies is indispensable to systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). Bioplex 2200 ANA screen is a multiplex immunoassay system that allows simultaneous determination of autoantibodies to extractable nuclear antigens (ENA) including anti-chromatin antibodies (ACAs). However, the clinical significance of the ACAs by this new method in SLE patients has not been studie...

Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers (NSDTRs) are a dog breed often affected by immune-mediated rheumatic disease (IMRD), a disorder characterised by chronic stiffness and joint pain. Most, but not all, dogs with IMRD, have antinuclear antibodies (ANA), which are also commonly present in the autoimmune disease systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). The clinical and diagnostic findings of IMRD indic...

We evaluated 5 commercially available HEp-2 antinuclear antibody (ANA) indirect fluorescent antibody (IFA) assays using patient serum samples from 45 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, 50 with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), 35 with scleroderma, 20 with Sjögren syndrome, 10 with polymyositis, and 100 healthy control subjects. In addition, 12 defined serum samples from the Centers for Disea...

Epidermal nuclear staining occurs as a result of anti-nuclear antibody (ANA) deposition in the nucleus of keratinocyte (‘In vivo ANA’). The frequency with which it occurs in various CTD’s varies between 2.6-9.8%.[2] The high prevalence in our study could be due to the smaller study sample. Four different patterns of ENS (viz. speckled, homogenous, nucleolar and rim) have been reported in the li...

BACKGROUND Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is an autoimmune disorder characterized by multisystem microvascular inflammation with the generation of autoantibodies. There are reports on demographic data and clinical manifestation of lupus in the United States of America and some other developed countries. There is a single study that has reported on the clinical and immunological features of ...

Materials and methods Five female patients with a median age of 14 years (range: 12–16 years) with class IV (3/5) and class II (2/5) lupus nephritis were treated with rituximab, steroids and plasmapheresis. Rituximab was given with a dose of 375 mg/ m2/week for 4 weeks. Two patients had severe thrombocytopenia, while one of them had developed macrophage activating syndrome. All of them had rena...