Autoantibodies: Serum Content or Profiles?

Abstract

“…The initial paradigm “one autoantibody for one disease” does not appear to be useful any longer. An autoantibody profile does seem to offer more diagnostic and prognostic power than the determination of single autoantibody specificity” (P-L. Meroni). Why is it so? Fruitfulness of the idea for identification of autoantibody depends on reactivity patterns (autoantibody signatures or profiles) illustrated by analyses of few examples where clinical and laboratory symptoms corresponded to changes in profiles of serum auto-Abs and mismatched to single auto-Ab serum evaluation. Author proposes that future “mapping” repertoires of thousands of natural auto-Abs as the profiles will lead to the appearance of principally new technologies in clinical as well as pre-clinical diagnosis of different chronic diseases.

Keywords: Natural autoimmunity, immune network, serum autoantibodies, laboratory diagnostic, profiles of autoantibodies.

Cite as