The serological presence of autoantibodies is diagnostic of autoimmunity, and these autoantibodies may be present for many years before the presentation of autoimmune disease (AID). Although a pathogenic role has been demonstrated for various autoantibodies reactive with cell surface and extracellular autoantigens, studies using monoclonal antibodies (mAb) show not all antibodies in the polyclo...

Little is known about the etiology of neuropsychiatric disorders. The identification of autoantibodies targeting the N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDA-R), which causes neurological and psychiatric symptoms, has reinvigorated the hypothesis that other patient subgroups may also suffer from an underlying autoimmune condition. In recent years, a wide range of neuropsychiatric diseases and autoan...

Autoantibodies to various cellular constituents are detected in the sera of patients with idiopathic inflammatory myopathy (IIM). These autoantibodies are closely associated with characteristic clinical manifestations of the diseases. Therefore, autoantibodies give us much information in clinical diagnosis, classification, prediction of prognosis and choice of treatment in patients with IIM. Du...

BACKGROUND It has recently been shown that humoral antigastric autoreactivities occur in a substantial number of Helicobacter pylori infected patients. AIMS To analyse the relevance of such antigastric autoantibodies for histological and serological parameters of the infection as well as for the clinical course. METHODS Gastric biopsy samples and sera from 126 patients with upper abdominal ...

Studies on autoantibody production in patients treated with tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) inhibitors reported contradictory results. We investigated in a prospective study the efficacy of a treatment with human monoclonal anti-TNF-alpha antibody (adalimumab) in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and we evaluated the relationship between treatment efficacy and the incidence and ti...

OBJECTIVE There is limited information from large-scale prospective studies regarding the prediction of type 1 diabetes by specific types of pancreatic islet autoantibodies, either alone or in combination. Thus, we studied the extent to which specific autoantibodies are predictive of type 1 diabetes. RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS Two cohorts were derived from the first screening for islet cell ...

Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) affect up to 1 in 68 children. Autism-specific autoantibodies directed against fetal brain proteins have been found exclusively in a subpopulation of mothers whose children were diagnosed with ASD or maternal autoantibody-related autism. We tested the impact of autoantibodies on brain development in mice by transferring human antigen-specific IgG directly into t...

BACKGROUND Autoimmune comorbidities and circulating autoantibodies have been observed in vitiligo patients, but differences in rate are present according to countries in which the studies were performed, perhaps owing to ethnic diversities or different trigger factors. OBJECTIVE To estimate the prevalence of circulating autoantibodies and overt autoimmune diseases in a fairly large sample of ...

Autoantibodies against antigens expressed by insulin-producing β cells are circulating in both healthy individuals and patients at risk of developing Type 1 diabetes. Recent studies suggest that another set of antibodies (anti-idiotypic antibodies) exists in this antibody/antigen interacting network to regulate auto-reactive responses. Anti-idiotypic antibodies may block the antigen-binding sit...

We report the first case of a patient with hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection and idiopathic thrombocytopenic purpura (ITP), who later developed acquired amegakaryocytic thrombocytopenia (AAMT), with autoantibodies to the thrombopoietin (TPO) receptor (c-Mpl). A 64-year-old woman, with chronic hepatitis C, developed severe thrombocytopenia and was diagnosed with ITP. She died of liver failure. A...