Advances in understanding what we measure when detecting anticardiolipin autoantibodies

Understanding so-called anticardiolipin autoantibodies has been the focus of significant interest due to their accepted role in the pathology of antiphospholipid syndrome (APS). How these antibodies contribute to thrombosis, stroke and recurrent fetal loss is not clearly understood. A precise determination of the antigenic epitope(s) recognized by anticardiolipin autoantibodies will contribute to an understanding of their role in this complex disease; however, there have been many conflicting reports regarding these epitope(s), and many of the apparent contradictions arise from the assay systems that have been used. In this review, we attempt to highlight what we believe are the salient points on this issue. We present further evidence supporting our hypothesis that most of these autoantibodies recognize epitope(s) located on domain 1 (DI) of beta2-glycoprotein 1 (beta2GPI).