You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Electronic pages
Letter
Detection of antinuclear antibodies: added value of solid phase assay?
  1. Xavier Bossuyt1,2,
  2. Steffen Fieuws3
  1. 1Laboratory Medicine, University Hospitals Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
  2. 2Experimental Laboratory Immunology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven, Belgium
  3. 3I-Biostat, KULeuven University of Leuven and Universiteit Hasselt, Leuven, Belgium
  1. Correspondence to Dr Xavier Bossuyt, Laboratory Medicine, University Hospitals Leuven & Experimental Laboratory Immunology, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Leuven 3000, Belgium; xavier.bossuyt{at}uzleuven.be

https://doi.org/10.1136/annrheumdis-2013-204793

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Agmon-Levin et al1 formulated recommendations for the assessment of antinuclear antibodies (ANA). Indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) is considered the reference method for ANA screening, which is in agreement with the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) position statement.2 The recommendations are based on current knowledge and expert experience. However, as recognised by Meroni and Schur,2 no well-planned studies comparing the diagnostic accuracy of the old IIF and the new methods have been undertaken.

    In a recent study, IIF was compared to a new automated method for connective disease screening (fluoroenzymeimmunoassay (FEIA) (EliA CTD screen, Thermo Fisher)) using samples obtained at the time of diagnosis from well-characterised patients and controls.3 Diagnostic accuracy data (for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), systemic sclerosis (SSc) and Sjögren's syndrome (SS)) from this study is recapitulated in table 1. …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors XB: drafted the manuscript. SF: performed the ROC analyses, critically revised the manuscript.

    • Competing interests XB is a senior clinical investigator of the Fund for Scientific Research—Flanders. XB has received a lecture fee from Thermo Fisher.

    • Ethics approval Ethics Committee University Hospital Leuven.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

    Linked Articles