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Anti-Nuclear Antibody Screening Using HEp-2 Cells
Published on: June 23, 2014
Anti-Sa antibodies: prognostic and pathogenetic significance to rheumatoid arthritis
Hani S El-Gabalawy1, John A Wilkins
1Rheumatic Disease Research Laboratory, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. elgabal@cc.umanitoba.ca
Abstract:
Anti-Sa antibodies are detected in the serum of 20-47% of patients with rheumatoid arthritis. These antibodies have a high degree of specificity for the disease, and appear to identify a subset of early rheumatoid arthritis patients destined to have aggressive and destructive disease. It has recently been confirmed that anti-Sa antibodies are directed to citrullinated vimentin, thus placing them in the anti-citrulline family of autoantibodies. The Sa antigen has previously been shown to be present in synovium. This, along with the demonstration of citrullinated proteins in rheumatoid synovium, suggests that anti-Sa antibodies may play a pathogenetic role in the initiation and/or persistence of rheumatoid synovitis.
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