0000000000084431
AUTHOR
M. G. Alessio
Overcoming a “Probable” Diagnosis in Antimitochondrial Antibody Negative Primary Biliary Cirrhosis: Study of 100 Sera and Review of the Literature
Serum anti-mitochondrial antibodies (AMA) are the serological hallmark of primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC), yet up to 15% of PBC sera are AMA negative at routine indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) while being referred to as “probable” cases. The diagnostic role of PBC-specific antinuclear antibodies (ANA) remains to be determined. We will report herein data on the accuracy of new laboratory tools for AMA and PBC-specific ANA in a large series of PBC sera that were AMA-negative at IIF. We will also provide a discussion of the history and current status of AMA detection methods. We included IIF AMA-negative PBC sera (n = 100) and sera from patients with other chronic liver diseases (n = 104) th…
IgA anti-actin antibodies ELISA in coeliac disease: A multicentre study.
Previous studies have demonstrated that serum anti-actin antibodies are a reliable marker of intestinal damage severity in coeliac disease.To validate in a multicentre study the clinical usefulness of serum IgA anti-actin antibody ELISA and its possible use in monitoring intestinal mucosa lesions during gluten-free diet.Four centres recruited 205 newly diagnosed coeliac disease patients with villous atrophy, 80 healthy controls and 81 "disease" controls. Twelve coeliac disease patients on gluten-free diet but with persistent symptoms underwent serum IgA anti-actin antibody assay and intestinal histology evaluation. IgA anti-actin antibody ELISA was performed with a commercial kit. All coeli…