Anti-collagen type v: a marker of early systemic sclerosis?

To evaluate the frequency of anti-collagen type V in humans with early systemic sclerosis (SSc) compared to defined SSc patients and healthy controls, since collagen type V was shown to be overexpressed in early SSc patients' skin and there is no data concerning the presence of this antibody in early stages of human SSc. Experimental studies showed that animal models immunized with collagen type V developed a disease similar to human systemic sclerosis (SSc), with antibodies production, mainly in early stages post-immunization.

Eighty-one female SSc patients were included and divided into two groups: early-SSc (18 patients-EULAR Preliminary Criteria) and defined-SSc (63 patients-ACR Criteria 1980). The control group consisted of 19 healthy women age-matched to Early-SSc group. Anti-collagen type V was performed by ELISA. Data was analyzed by appropriate tests.

The prevalence of anti-collagen type V in early-SSc, defined-SSc and control groups was respectively 33, 17 and 5% (p = 0.07). SSc patients with anti-collagen type V had shorter disease duration compared to those without this antibody (8.8 ± 5.1 vs. 14.7 ± 8.9, p = 0.006). Likewise, early-SSc patients with anti-collagen V also had a shorter disease duration than patients negative for this antibody (4.6 ± 2.2 vs. 9.7 ± 5.2, p = 0.04). No association with clinical subsets or scleroderma antibodies specificities was observed (p > 0.05).

The production of anti-collagen type V in SSc seems to be an early event independent of other antibodies specificities. Further studies are necessary to determine if the underlying mechanism for this chronology involves a primary immune response to abnormal expression of collagen type V.