Serologic recognition of defined nuclear antigens in collagen disease: Immunoblotting as new diagnostic aid

Immunoblotting provides a method to demonstrate the presence of antibodies against specific antigens in the serum of patients with collagen disease in an accurate and reproducible manner. The technique is particularly suited for the analysis of complex mixtures of antibodies. That a number of these antibodies are syndrome-specific means that the technique can be used as an aid in the sometimes difficult diagnosis of this disease. More comparative research should be carried out with sera of patients with an accurate clinical diagnosis. RANA analysis (rheumatoid arthritis nuclear antigen), Ro-antigen and Jo-1-antigen (according to the literature correlated with poly/dermatomyositis) are currently under investigation. In some cases (notably in patients with Raynaud syndrome) scleroderma antibodies could be established long before a definitive diagnosis of scleroderma could be established. This opens the possibility for future comparative investigations in these risk patients to see whether treatment at an earlier stage is able to delay the course of this disease. The method's applicability need not be restricted to the group of collagen diseases because the serum of the patients can be examined for any specific auto-antibodies for every type of auto-immune disease.