1. Anti-mitochondrial antibody immunofluorescent titres correlate with the number and intensity of immunoblot-detected mitochondrial bands in patients with primary biliary cirrhosis
- Author
-
Andreas Koutsoumpas, Harold Baum, Diego Vergani, Eirini I. Rigopoulou, Christos Liaskos, George N. Dalekos, and Dimitrios-Petrou Bogdanos
- Subjects
Male ,Immunoblotting ,Clinical Biochemistry ,Mitochondria, Liver ,Immunologic Tests ,Biology ,Autoantigens ,Biochemistry ,Liver disease ,Primary biliary cirrhosis ,Antigen ,parasitic diseases ,medicine ,Humans ,Fluorescent Antibody Technique, Indirect ,Autoantibodies ,Autoimmune disease ,Liver Cirrhosis, Biliary ,Biochemistry (medical) ,Autoantibody ,General Medicine ,Middle Aged ,Pyruvate dehydrogenase complex ,medicine.disease ,Immunology ,biology.protein ,Female ,Antibody ,Anti-mitochondrial antibody - Abstract
Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC)-specific anti-mitochondrial antibodies (AMA), routinely detected by indirect immunofluoresnce, immunofix various mitochondrial antigens by immunoblot (IB). We have investigated whether there is a relationship between IFL-determined AMA titres and the number, intensity or pattern of IB-bands.By computer-assisted imaging technology, an IB analysis using human liver mitochondrial preparation was performed in 100 AMA positive PBC samples, subdivided in 5 groups each consisting of 20 cases with very high, high, intermediate, low or borderline IFL titres and in 19 AMA-negative cases.Reactivity to at least 1 mitochondrial band (range 1-12) was present in 114 (96%) cases. Reactivity to the major pyruvate dehydrogenase E2-subunit 74-kDa autoantigen positively correlated with AMA IFL titres but was absent in 25% IFL-positive cases. The intensity and number of IB-bands differed significantly among groups (p0.001). IFL AMA titres positively correlated with the total number (r=0.8, p0.001) and the intensity of the IB-bands (r=0.75, p0.001).Our study indicates that IFL-determined AMA relate to the number and intensity of immunofixed bands. Reactivity to PDC-E2 does not correlate with IFL titres in a considerable proportion of patients suggesting that detection methods of AMA need to be based in the entire spectrum of the disease-specific mitochondrial antigens.
- Published
- 2007
- Full Text
- View/download PDF