Antinuclear antibodies and cancer: A literature review

Antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) are a spectrum of autoantibodies targeted to various nuclear and cytoplasmic components of the cells. They are very useful as serological markers for different autoimmune disease, like systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), Sjögren's syndrome (SS), scleroderma, polymyositis, or mixed connective tissue disease. In these years, an increasing attention has been focussed in the relationship between tumours and autoimmunity. Different authors have demonstrated that ANAs are presented, not only in autoimmune diseases, also in serum of patients with different types of cancers. These data suggested that ANAs could be involved in the pathogenesis of cancer as well as other premalignant disease. In this review, we are going to describe all data reported about the presence of these antibodies in samples from patients with cancer as well as the potential role of some of these proteins in early detection and prognosis.