Specificity in systemic lupus erythematosus of antibodies to double-stranded dna measured with the polyethylene glycol precipitation assay

✍ Scribed by Ruud Smeenk; Gonnie Van Der Lelij; Tom Swaak; Janny Groenwold; Lucien Aarden

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1982
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 740 KB
• Volume: 25
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-3591
• DOI: 10.1002/art.1780250605

✦ Synopsis

Recently, a new radioimmunoassay-the polyethylene glycol (PEG) assay-was introduced to measure antibodies to double-stranded (ds) DNA. In this method, polyethylene glycol precipitation of formed 3H-DNMantiDNA complexes is used instead of the ammonium sulfate precipitation used in the Farr assay. In contrast to the Farr assay, with which only high-avidity antibodies to dsDNA are detected, the PEG assay also reportedly measures anti-dsDNA of relatively low avidity. We studied whether this gain in antibody measurement results in loss of specificity for systemic lupus erythematosus. When the PEG assay was applied to a selected panel of 440 sera from patients with various well-defined autoimmune diseases and to a group of 197 normal human control sera, matched for sex and age to the patients, the method was found to be fairly specific for systemic lupus erythematosus, although the sera From the Department of Autoimmune Diseases, Central Laboratory of the Netherlands Red Cross Blood Transfusion Service; the Laboratory for Experimental and Clinical Immunology,