Home The clinical relevance of anti-dsDNA antibodies determined by the Elia™ dsDNA assay in patients with negative indirect immunofluorescence on the HEp-2 cell
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The clinical relevance of anti-dsDNA antibodies determined by the Elia™ dsDNA assay in patients with negative indirect immunofluorescence on the HEp-2 cell

  • Christoph Robier EMAIL logo , Maximiliane Haas and Franz Quehenberger
Published/Copyright: October 16, 2020

Abstract

Objectives

Data on the clinical importance of the detection of anti-dsDNA antibodies in patients with negative indirect immunofluorescence on the HEp-2 cell (IIF) are sparse and are especially not available for all common commercially available assays. This study aimed to assess the clinical significance of anti-dsDNA antibodies determined by the Elia™ dsDNA assay in patients with negative IIF.

Methods

We retrospectively examined the medical records of 234 consecutive subjects with detectable anti-dsDNA antibodies determined by the Elia™ dsDNA assay.

Results

A total of 124 subjects with detectable anti-dsDNA autoantibodies were IIF-negative, but yielded positive or borderline results in the Elia™ CTD screen assay for antinuclear antibodies (ANA). Within this group, 6/49 IIF-negative patients (12%) with ANA-associated systemic autoimmune rheumatic disorders (AASARD) and 118/185 subjects (64%) with various other diseases (Non-AASARD) were identified. There was no statistically significant difference with regard to the concentrations of anti-dsDNA antibodies (p=0.53) between the AASARD and the Non-AASARD group. Within the AASARD group, four patients diagnosed with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE, treated), discoid lupus erythematosus (untreated), indetermined connective tissue disease (untreated) and polymyositis (treated) had positive anti-dsDNA autoantibodies, whereas two patients with treated SLE, thereby one in remission, had borderline concentrations of anti-dsDNA antibodies.

Conclusions

Our findings suggest that the detection of anti-dsDNA antibodies in IIF-negative patients can be of clinical relevance in some cases. Our results further support the combined use of IIF and solid-phase assays in screening algorithms for ANA, in order to avoid overlooking potentially important autoantibody entities.


Corresponding author: Christoph Robier, MD, PD, Institute of Laboratory Diagnostics, Hospital of the Brothers of St. John of God, Bergstr. 27, 8020Graz, Austria; and Clinical Institute of Medical and Chemical Laboratory Diagnostics, Medical University Graz, Graz, Austria, Phone: + 43 316 5989 26671, Fax: + 43 316 5989 21505, E-mail:

  1. Research funding: None declared.

  2. Author contributions: All authors have accepted responsibility for the entire content of this manuscript and approved its submission.

  3. Competing interests: CR received travel grants and lecture fees from Phadia/Thermo Fisher Scientific. All other authors state no conflict of interest. The company was not involved in the study design, the collection, analysis and interpretation of data, in the writing process and the decision to submit the manuscript for publication. Authors state no conflict of interest.

  4. Informed consent: Informed consent was obtained from all individuals included in this study.

  5. Ethical approval: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the Hospital of the Brothers of St. John of God in Graz and was performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Received: 2020-09-18
Accepted: 2020-10-05
Published Online: 2020-10-16
Published in Print: 2021-02-23

© 2020 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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