Autoantibody profiles in two patients with non-autoimmune muscle disease implicate a role for gliadin autoreactivity

The objective of this case study was to characterize autoreactivity in two patients with non-autoimmune forms of muscle disease who had positivity for antinuclear antibodies (ANA) and Ro (SSA) autoantibodies. Serum samples from these two patients were applied to an autoantigen protein array with more than 70 specificities and were compared to samples from healthy controls and patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. Both myopathy patients had high levels of gliadin autoreactivity in serum and one patient had an overall autoantibody profile with lupus-like features. The findings suggest that some disorders of muscle that are considered non-autoimmune, may in fact have autoimmune features. Further examination of the role of subclinical gluten autoreactivity in the pathogenesis of myopathy syndromes has the potential to suggest improved approaches to diagnosis and treatment of these conditions.