Serodetection of Antinuclear Antibodies (ANA) in Patients with Various Cancer Types

Autoantibodies may play an important role in pathogenetic mechanism of autoimmune diseases and cancer and could lead to the identification of novel prognostic and/or predictive biomarkers for disease management. The purpose of the study was to investigate the prevalence of antinuclear antibodies (ANA) in sera of the patients with autoimmune rheumatic disease and various cancer types. Sera were obtained from 54 patients with cancer (37 breast, 1 myxoid liposarcoma, 1 brain, 2 lung, 1 colon, 3 gastric, 1 pancreas, 2 lymphoma, 1 multipl myeloma, 1 nasopharynx, 1 renal, 1 prostate, 1 vulva, 1 endometrial) and with rheumatic compliant. A total of 100 healthy blood donors served as the study control group. ANA patterns were searched by using the HEp-2010/Liver (Monkey) indirect immunofluorescence assay (IFA) kit (Euroimmun, Lübeck, Germany). These samples were further processed by line immunoassay (LIA), (Euroimmun, Lübeck, Germany). Of 54 patients, 18 were ANApositive by IFA and LIA. Homogeneous (8), granular/speckled (2), nucleolar (2), anticentromere (2) and mixed (4) patterns were detected by IFA. SS-A/Ro (8), SS-B/La (6), antidsDNA (2), antiScl (2) and CENPB (2) positivity were observed by LIA. In healthy control group, ANA was not detected. There was statistically significant difference between the results of the patients and of the control group (p<0.05). Of 54 patients, 29 were diagnosed with cancer while 20 were diagnosed with rheumatic disease firstly; and 5 were diagnosed with both simultaneously. According to our results autoantibodies are more prevalent in the serum of patients with cancer compared to healthy controls. Further studies will contribute to the area for detecting various autoantibodies as potential diagnostic or prognostic tests.