Autoantibodies identify primary Sjögren's syndrome in patients lacking serum IgG specific for Ro/SS-A and La/SS-B

Identify autoantibodies in anti-Ro/SS-A negative primary Sjögren's syndrome (SS).

This is a proof-of-concept, case-control study of SS, healthy (HC) and other disease (OD) controls. A discovery dataset of plasma samples (n=30 SS, n=15 HC) was tested on human proteome arrays containing 19 500 proteins. A validation dataset of plasma and stimulated parotid saliva from additional SS cases (n=46 anti-Ro⁺, n=50 anti-Ro^-), HC (n=42) and OD (n=54) was tested on custom arrays containing 74 proteins. For each protein, the mean+3 SD of the HC value defined the positivity threshold. Differences from HC were determined by Fisher's exact test and random forest machine learning using 2/3 of the validation dataset for training and 1/3 for testing. Applicability of the results was explored in an independent rheumatology practice cohort (n=38 Ro⁺, n=36 Ro^-, n=10 HC). Relationships among antigens were explored using Search Tool for the Retrieval of Interacting Genes/Proteins (STRING) interactome analysis.

Ro⁺ SS parotid saliva contained autoantibodies binding to Ro60, Ro52, La/SS-B and muscarinic receptor 5. SS plasma contained 12 novel autoantibody specificities, 11 of which were detected in both the discovery and validation datasets. Binding to ≥1 of the novel antigens identified 54% of Ro^- SS and 37% of Ro⁺ SS cases, with 100% specificity in both groups. Machine learning identified 30 novel specificities showing receiver operating characteristic area under the curve of 0.79 (95% CI 0.64 to 0.93) for identifying Ro^- SS. Sera from Ro^- cases of an independent cohort bound 17 of the non-canonical antigens. Antigenic targets in both Ro⁺ and Ro^- SS were part of leukaemia cell, ubiquitin conjugation and antiviral defence pathways.

We identified antigenic targets of the autoantibody response in SS that may be useful for identifying up to half of Ro seronegative SS cases.