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Updated: Jun 19, 2026

Anti-Nuclear Antibody Screening Using HEp-2 Cells
Published on: June 23, 2014
The anti-mutated citrullinated vimentin response classifies patients with rheumatoid arthritis into broad and narrow
Robby Engelmann1, Jan Brandt, Martin Eggert
1Institute of Immunology, University of Rostock, Germany. robby.engelmann@med.uni-rostock.de
Objective:
Autoantibodies against citrullinated peptide antigens (ACPA) are routinely determined to diagnose rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and are predictive of a more severe course of the disease. We here set out to address an involvement of ACPA in the pathogenesis of RA and investigated the recognition pattern of antibodies against 2 citrullinated antigens in more detail.
Methods:
The sera of 77 patients fulfilling the American College of Rheumatology criteria for RA were analyzed for subclass titers of anti-mutated citrullinated vimentin (MCV) and anticyclic citrullinated peptide (CCP) antibodies by combining subclass specific detection antibodies with commercially available CCP and MCV ELISA plates. Cross-reactivities between anti-MCV and anti-CCP antibodies were detected using a sequential ELISA system.
Results:
IgG1, IgG3, and IgG4 titers among anti-MCV and anti-CCP antibodies correlated significantly. Cross-reactivity of MCV-specific antibodies against CCP could be detected in 8 of 16 patients' sera; however, cross-binding of MCV-specific IgG4 was weaker compared to total IgG.
Conclusion:
The inherent capacity of IgG4 to exchange F(ab) arms provides insight into the anti-MCV antibody diversity and suggests a classification of ACPA positive patients into broad and narrow responders.
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