Digital ulcers and gangrene are common skin manifestations of connective tissue diseases, especially systemic sclerosis, although they are relatively rare in systemic lupus erythematosus. We describe here three patients with digital gangrene and systemic lupus erythematosus. None of the patients showed high disease activity of systemic lupus erythematosus at the time the digital gangrene develo...

We report a case of an anti-nuclear antibody (ANA)-negative patient with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) accompanied with anti-phospholipid antibody syndrome (APS) and lupus nephritis (LN). Histological examination of placenta obtained by an artificially-induced abortion revealed multiple thromboses in the placental villi. Histology of biopsied kidney tissue revealed minimal change with depo...

Antiphospholipid syndrome (APS) is recognized as one of the main determinants of hypercoagulable conditions. The literature reports the incidence of this syndrome in a third of patients who underwent surgery for peripheral revascularization. Antiphospholipid antibodies are divided into two categories in relation to specific diagnostic tests. The first group is called lupus anticoagulant and con...

Sera from patients with proven cases of syphilis were tested for the presence of antibodies to structurally important phospholipids by using qualitative and quantitative assays. All 47 sera examined qualitatively contained antibodies to cardiolipin, phosphatidic acid, and phosphatidylserine, but not antibodies to other selected phospholipids. Such reactivity was not found in normal (Red Cross) ...

Activated protein C (APC) anticoagulant activity and the ability to be inhibited by auto-antibodies associated with thrombosis are strongly augmented by the presence of phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) and phospholipid oxidation. beta(2)-glycoprotein I (beta(2)-GPI) is a major antigen for antiphospholipid antibodies present in patients with the antiphospholipid syndrome. We therefore investigated ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the association of IgG and IgM antibodies directed against different negatively charged phospholipids (that is, anticardiolipin (aCL), antiphosphatidylinositol, antiphosphatidylserine, and antiphosphatidic acid) and anti-beta(2)-glycoprotein I (abeta(2)GPI), with Raynaud's phenomenon in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). METHODS Ninety three patients with ...

Considerable interest is currently focused on the interactions of beta-2 glycoprotein I (beta2GPI) and anti-phospholipid antibodies with anionic phospholipids in an attempt to understand the association between these antibodies and clinical diseases such as thrombosis. The interactions of beta2GPI and anionic phospholipids have only been characterized partially, and the physiological role of th...

We showed previously that nucleophosmin (NPM), a nucleolar phosphoprotein, is recognized by sera from (NZW x BXSB)F1 (WB) mice, a model of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and anti-phospholipid syndrome. In the present study we analysed the prevalence and kinetics of anti-NPM autoantibodies in WB mice by a solid-phase ELISA with recombinant human (rh) NPM as the antigen and showed that most m...

in order to determine the role of different anti-phospholipid antibodies as an etiologic factor in recurrent pregnancy failure, a prospective study was done on one-hundred and thirty-eight women who had unexplained recurrent pregnancy loss (group i) with one-hundred well-matched women with normal reproductive outcome allocated as control group (gil). sera from 138 patients and 100 controls were...