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European Journal of Dermatology

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The prevalence of anti-cytoplasmic antibodies in connective tissue diseases Volume 7, issue 3, April - May 1997

Authors
Department of Dermatology, Gunma University School of Medicine, 3-39-22, Showamachi, Maebashi, Gunma 371, Japan.

We investigated the prevalence of anti-cytoplasmic antibodies in the sera of 198 patients with connective tissue diseases, systemic sclerosis (n = 70), systemic sclerosis/primary biliary cirrhosis overlap syndrome (n = 10), primary biliary cirrhosis (n = 10), systemic lupus erythematosus (n = 57), Sjögren syndrome (n = 22), polymyositis/dermatomyositis (n = 16) and morphea (n = 13), by indirect immunofluorescence (IF) of human epithelial (HEp-2) cells. Cytoplasmic IF staining was observed in 65 sera (32.8%). The significantly high prevalence of the coarse, granular filamentous speckled pattern was found in SSc/PBS or PBC alone (p < 0.01) and the diffuse fine speckled pattern in SLE (p < 0.05). Anti-cytoplasmic antibodies are frequently found in the sera of patients with connective tissue diseases and certain characteristic patterns on IF are more diagnostic than others.