Abstract:
It has been postulated that anticardiolipin antibodies (ACAs), capable of reacting with several forms of phospholipid present on various body tissue, may play a role in the pathogenesis or progression of some autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and certain neurological disorders. An enzyme immunoassay for the detection of ACAs has been developed in this study in order to examine the incidence of ACAs in patients afflicted with SLE, complication following Semple vaccination and other neurological diseases. This will provide the basic knowledge in the search for any relationship between ACAs and certain diseases. Of the 100 cases of SLE, seventeen expressed ACA activity. Analysis of these cases revealed eleven positive sera out of 81 from persons with mild SLE (13.58%) and 6 positive cases among 19 severely ill inpatients (31.54%). Most of the ACAs positive sera exhibited IgG isotype. These sera reacted to VDRL-Ag with a relatively low binding activity as measured by enzyme immunoassay. On the contrary, sera from 20 syphilitic patients reacted fairly well with cardiolipin but demonstrated a much stronger reactivity against VDRL-Ag. Our result indicates that the antiphospholipid antibodies manifested in the two groups of patients are distinct. Investigation of ACAs in forty six patients with neurological complication after Semple vaccination revealed 16 positive sera out of 25 patients with major symptoms (64%) and 2 positive cases among 21 patients (9.5%) with minor illness. No ACAs have been demonstrated among 36 normal vaccines without complaints. Sequential studies of ACAs in hospitalized cases indicated fluctuation of antibody levels and the detection of ACAs as late as 27 days of illness. ACAs isotype studies showed several patterns of which the majority includes IgG, expressed as single or multiple isotypes. Anticardiolipin antibodies were also demonstrated in other neurological disorders. For instance, there were 10 positive cases among 43 neurological disease of immunopathogenic basis (23.5%) which was similar to the incidence of ACAs in the degenerative disease group (5 out of 22, 22.7%) On the other hand, ACAs were much less frequently observed in a group of CNS infection (4 out of 31, 12.9%) and in the miscellaneous category (2 out of 31, 6.45%). The present investigation suggest a close association between ACAs and severity of certain diseases of immunopathogenic basis, particularly in the group of postvaccinal complication.