Journal
JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR MEDICINE-JMM
Volume 88, Issue 7, Pages 719-727Publisher
SPRINGER
DOI: 10.1007/s00109-010-0618-1
Keywords
Lupus; Antibodies; Autoimmunity; Ribosomal P; Epitope
Funding
- National Institutes of Health [AI82714, AI31584, AR58554, AR45451, AI47575, AR53483, AR48045, AR45084, AR45231, AR42460, AR48940, AI24717, RR20143, RR15577, RR14467]
- Presbyterian Health Foundation
- Lou Kerr Chair in Biomedical Research
- Kirkland Foundation
- US Department of Veteran Affairs
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Autoantibodies to ribosomal P (ribo P) are found in 15-30% of systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients and are highly specific for SLE. The goal of this study is to assess the temporal association of anti-ribosomal P (anti-P) responses with SLE disease onset, as well as to characterize select humoral ribo P epitopes targeted in early, pre-diagnostic SLE samples. Patients with stored serial serum samples available prior to SLE diagnosis were identified from a military cohort. Each sample was tested for antibodies against ribo P utilizing standard C terminus ribo P enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) and a solid phase, bead-based assay with affinity-purified ribo P proteins. In this study, antibodies to ribo P were more common in African American SLE patients (p = 0.026), and anti-P-positive patients comprised a group with more measured autoantibody specificities than did other SLE patients (3.5 vs 2.2, p < 0.05). Antibodies against ribo P were present on average 1.7 years before SLE diagnosis and were detected an average of 1.08 years earlier in pre-diagnostic SLE samples using affinity-purified whole protein rather than C-terminal peptide alone (p = 0.0019). Furthermore, 61% of anti-P-positive patients initially had antibodies to aa 99-113, a known ribosomal P0 antigenic target, at a time point when no antibodies to the clinically used C terminus were detected. Our findings provide evidence that antibodies against ribosomal P frequently develop before clinical SLE diagnosis and are more broadly reactive than previously thought by targeting regions outside of the C terminus.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available