Autoantibodies towards HFE and SYT5 in anti-neutrophil cytoplasm antibody-associated vasculitis relapse

Identification of those at high and low risk of disease relapse is a major unmet need in the management of patients with ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV). Precise stratification would allow tailoring of immunosuppressive medication. We profiled the autoantibody repertoire of AAV patients in remission to identify novel autoantibodies associated with relapse risk.

Plasma samples collected from 246 AAV patients in remission were screened for novel autoantibodies using in-house generated protein arrays including 42 000 protein fragments representing 18 000 unique human proteins. Patients were categorized based on the occurrence and frequency of relapses. We modelled the association between these antibodies and relapse occurrence using descriptive and high dimensional regression approaches.

We observed nine autoantibodies at higher frequency in samples from AAV patients experiencing multiple relapses compared with patients in long-term remission off therapy. LASSO analysis identified six autoantibodies that exhibited an association with relapse occurrence after sample collection. Antibodies targeting homeostatic iron regulator (HFE) and synaptotagmin 5 (SYT5) were identified as associated with relapse in both analyses.

Through a broad protein array-based autoantibody screening, we identified two novel autoantibodies directed against HFE and SYT5 as candidate biomarkers of relapse in AAV.