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Rheumatology Advance Access originally published online on May 22, 2008
Rheumatology 2008 47(7):976-979; doi:10.1093/rheumatology/ken201
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© 2008 The Author(s)
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Anti-RNA polymerase III antibodies in patients with systemic sclerosis detected by indirect immunofluorescence and ELISA

J. C. Parker1, R. W. Burlingame2, T. T. Webb2 and C. C. Bunn1

1Department of Clinical Immunology, Royal Free Hospital, London, UK and 2INOVA Diagnostics Inc., San Diego, CA, USA.

Correspondence to: C. C. Bunn, Department of Clinical Immunology, Royal Free Hospital, Pond Street, London NW3 2QG, UK. E-mail: c.bunn{at}medsch.ucl.ac.uk


  Abstract

Objectives. To evaluate the analytical performance of an ELISA for the detection of anti-RNA polymerase III antibody (ARA) and to assess IIF as a method for identifying this antibody.

Methods. A commercially available ELISA was used to assess the presence of ARA in sera from 1018 SSc patients. The sera had been divided into sub-populations based on the presence of specific autoantibodies, ANA pattern or the absence of both. Patients with ARA (n = 209) had been identified by characteristic ANA pattern by IIF on HEp-2 cell substrate [and additionally by radio-immunoprecipitation (IP) in 157/209 cases]. The remaining 809 SSc patients acted as a control group.

Results. Of 157 patients in whom ARA had been confirmed by IP, 150 were positive by ELISA providing a sensitivity of 96%. In the group where ARA had only been assessed by IIF, 100% (52/52) were ELISA positive. The ANA patterns indicating the presence of ARA were a fine-speckled nucleoplasmic stain with additional occasional bright dots, with or without concurrent punctate nucleolar staining. In the SSc control group, the ELISA attained a specificity of 98%, ARA being detected in 17/809 patients.

Conclusions. We report the outcome of a study on a large population of SSc patients that shows the ARA ELISA to be of high analytical sensitivity and specificity. We confirm that there is minimal overlap between ARA and other SSc-specific autoantibodies. Additionally, it is demonstrated that the presence of ARA correlates with identifiable patterns by IIF on HEp-2 cell substrate.

KEY WORDS: Anti-ribonucleic acid polymerase antibody, Systemic sclerosis, Anti-nuclear antibody, Indirect immunofluorescence, Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, Autoantibodies

Submitted 4 January 2008; revised version accepted 16 April 2008.
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