FAILURE TO DEMONSTRATE ANY INTERACTION BETWEEN POLYCLONAL RHEUMATOID FACTORS AND IGG ANTI-NUCLEAR ANTIBODIES OR OTHER IGG AUTOANTIBODIES

  • 1 January 1980
    • journal article
    • research article
    • Vol. 41  (2) , 297-302
Abstract
The autoantibody profile results from 750 randomly selected patients with rheumatoid factor (RF) and/or antinuclear antibody (ANA) positive tests were retrospectively analyzed in order to discover if the presence of polyclonal rheumatoid factors affects the incidence and titer of IgG-ANA in these patients. The incidence of IgG-ANA in the RF-positive group (34.4%) was significantly greater than that in the RF-negative groups (19.6%) (P < 0.001); there was no significant difference between the mean IgG-ANA titers of the 2 groups (P = 0.987). The possibility that the presence of IgM-RF in serum might be responsible for the inhibition of IgG-ANA was examined by treating the sera of selected patients who were RF-positive but IgG-ANA-negative with the dissociating agent D-penicillanimine (DP). After treatment, IgG-ANA was not detected in any of the sera. Similar studies were carried out to ascertain if there was a masking effect by RF on 2 other IgG autoantigobodies, anti-keratin antibody (AKA) and gastric parietal cell antibody (GPCA). There was no evidence that the presence of RF affects the incidence of AKA or GPCA. The presence of RF apparently is not a significant factor controlling the incidence of IgG-ANA or other IgG autoantibodies; the routine treatment of RF-containing serum with a dissociating agent before testing for autoantibodies is unnecessary.