Frequency of Antinuclear Antibodies in Healthy Children and Adolescents
- 1 September 2004
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Clinical Pediatrics
- Vol. 43 (7), 637-642
- https://doi.org/10.1177/000992280404300709
Abstract
Sera from 214 healthy children and adolescents (108 females [50.4%]) aged 6 months to 20 years (mean 8.7 years) and from 116 patients with rheumatic diseases were assayed for antinuclear antibody (ANA) by indirect immunofluorescence (IIF) by using HEp-2 cells as substrate. Twenty-seven healthy children (12.6%) presented a positive ANA test; there was no difference between genders, and we observed a trend for higher frequency of ANA ≥1/80 among children between 5 years and 10 years. Eight of the 27 healthy children with positive ANA test were reevaluated 36 months later, and none of them had developed any rheumatic disease, though the sera remained positive in 2 of them. ANA was present in 42/116 patients (36.2%). In daily medical practice ANA determination should be required only in individuals with clinical signs and symptoms suggestive of autoimmune disease.Keywords
This publication has 8 references indexed in Scilit:
- Delineating Physiological (Natural) Autoreactivity from Pathological AutoimmunityVox Sanguinis, 1996
- Enhancement of natural antibodies in mice immunized with exoantigens of pI 4.5 from Trypanosoma cruziImmunology Letters, 1994
- Natural AutoantibodiesAdvances in experimental medicine and biology, 1994
- Antinuclear antibodies using HEp-2 cells in normal children and in children with common infectionsJournal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 1991
- The frequency of antinuclear antibody (ANA) in children by use of mouse kidney (MK) and human epithelial cells (HEp-2) as substratesJournal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, 1988
- Murine Natural Monoclonal Autoantibodies: A Study of their Polyspecificities and their AffinitiesImmunological Reviews, 1986
- The 1982 revised criteria for the classification of systemic lupus erythematosusArthritis & Rheumatism, 1982
- Polymyositis and DermatomyositisNew England Journal of Medicine, 1975