We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience. This includes personalizing content and advertising. To learn more, click here. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies. Cookie Policy.

Features Partner Sites Information LinkXpress hp
Sign In
Advertise with Us
LGC Clinical Diagnostics

WERFEN

Werfen provides diagnostic instruments for critical care and hemostasis to meet the testing needs of medical professi... read more Featured Products: More products

Download Mobile App




Antinuclear-Antibody Testing Analyzed by Automated Indirect Immunofluorescence

By LabMedica International staff writers
Posted on 15 Apr 2014
Print article
Image: Fluorescence antinuclear antibody speckled pattern staining (Photo courtesy of the Autoantibody Standardization Committee).
Image: Fluorescence antinuclear antibody speckled pattern staining (Photo courtesy of the Autoantibody Standardization Committee).
Automated quantitative reading of fluorescence intensity has been evaluated for clinical relevance which allows for value-added reporting of test results.

Antinuclear antibodies (ANA) are important diagnostic markers for systemic rheumatic diseases (SRD), such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), systemic sclerosis (SSc), primary Sjögren’s syndrome (SS), mixed connective tissue disease (MCTD), and, to a lesser extent, polymyositis (PM), and dermatomyositis (DM).

Medical laboratory scientists at the University Hospitals Leuven (Belgium) collected blood samples from 434 controls which included 150 healthy blood donors, 150 chronic fatigue syndrome, and 134 diseased controls, and 252 samples obtained at diagnosis from patients with SRD. This latter group of 59 males and 193 females with a mean age of 46, range 15 to 85 years, included 32 PM/DM patients, 15 with MCTD, 10 cutaneous lupus cases, 83 diagnosed with SLE, 36 with SS, and 76 SSc patients.

The antinuclear antibodies (ANA) were detected using NOVA Lite HEp-2 ANA kit (Inova Diagnostics, Inc.; San Diego, CA, USA). The slide processing was carried out on Inova’s QUANTA-Lyser 2 and read using their NOVA View digital Indirect Immunofluorescence (IIF) microscope software. NOVA View is an automated fluorescent microscope programmed to acquire, archive and manage digital images of fluorescent stained slides. The system encloses an Olympus 1×81 inverted fluorescent microscope (Olympus Belgium N.V.; Aartselaar, Belgium). Likelihood ratios were calculated for fluorescence intensity result intervals.

The investigators found a significant correlation between end-point titer and fluorescence intensity. Likelihood ratios for a systemic rheumatic disease increased with increasing fluorescence intensity. The likelihood ratio for a systemic rheumatic disease was 0.06, 0.18, 0.51, 5.3, and 37.5 for a fluorescence intensity of equal to or greater than 66, 67 to 150, 151 to 300, 301 to 1,000, greater than 1,000, respectively. A range of 31% to 37% of the patients with Sjögren’s syndrome, systemic sclerosis or systemic lupus erythematosus had fluorescence intensities greater than 1,000.

The authors concluded that estimations of fluorescence intensity by automated antinuclear antibody analysis offers clinically useful information. Likelihood ratios based on fluorescence intensity test result intervals aid with the interpretation of automated antinuclear antibody analysis and allow value-added reporting. The study was published on April 1, 2014, in the journal Clinical Chemistry and Laboratory Medicine.

Related Links:

University Hospitals Leuven
Inova Diagnostics
Olympus Belgium NV


Gold Member
Pharmacogenetics Panel
VeriDose Core Panel v2.0
Verification Panels for Assay Development & QC
Seroconversion Panels
New
TETANUS Test
TETANUS VIRCLIA IgG MONOTEST
New
Piezoelectric Micropump
Disc Pump

Print article

Channels

Clinical Chemistry

view channel
Image: The tiny clay-based materials can be customized for a range of medical applications (Photo courtesy of Angira Roy and Sam O’Keefe)

‘Brilliantly Luminous’ Nanoscale Chemical Tool to Improve Disease Detection

Thousands of commercially available glowing molecules known as fluorophores are commonly used in medical imaging, disease detection, biomarker tagging, and chemical analysis. They are also integral in... Read more

Microbiology

view channel
Image: The lab-in-tube assay could improve TB diagnoses in rural or resource-limited areas (Photo courtesy of Kenny Lass/Tulane University)

Handheld Device Delivers Low-Cost TB Results in Less Than One Hour

Tuberculosis (TB) remains the deadliest infectious disease globally, affecting an estimated 10 million people annually. In 2021, about 4.2 million TB cases went undiagnosed or unreported, mainly due to... Read more

Technology

view channel
Image: The HIV-1 self-testing chip will be capable of selectively detecting HIV in whole blood samples (Photo courtesy of Shutterstock)

Disposable Microchip Technology Could Selectively Detect HIV in Whole Blood Samples

As of the end of 2023, approximately 40 million people globally were living with HIV, and around 630,000 individuals died from AIDS-related illnesses that same year. Despite a substantial decline in deaths... Read more

Industry

view channel
Image: The collaboration aims to leverage Oxford Nanopore\'s sequencing platform and Cepheid\'s GeneXpert system to advance the field of sequencing for infectious diseases (Photo courtesy of Cepheid)

Cepheid and Oxford Nanopore Technologies Partner on Advancing Automated Sequencing-Based Solutions

Cepheid (Sunnyvale, CA, USA), a leading molecular diagnostics company, and Oxford Nanopore Technologies (Oxford, UK), the company behind a new generation of sequencing-based molecular analysis technologies,... Read more
Copyright © 2000-2025 Globetech Media. All rights reserved.