Autoimmunity is a term which is used to describe the failure of one body’s immune system to be able recognise its own cells and tissues as “self”. This can either be organ-specific or even systemic in nature and in most cases correlates with disease associated autoantibodies (Auto-Ab) being produced.
The loss of this self-tolerance causes an immune response reaction against its own cells and tissues as if they were foreign or invading bodies. These reactions are termed autoimmunity and the diseases which are caused are referred to as autoimmune diseases. The huge impact these autoimmune diseases have on the cost of the healthcare and adequate patient therapies makes it absolutely necessary that we have reliable and accurate methods for diagnosis, prognosis and monitoring of these autoimmune diseases.
Some of the most common autoimmune diseases include:
- Rheumatic Disease: This can include rheumatoid arthritis (inflammation of synovial joints) or various inflammatory diseases within the connective tissues (lupus erythematosus, Sjogren’s syndrome and sclerosis). Antibodies to cyclic citrullinated peptides (anti-CCP) are well established as the markers of choice for the early diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Whereas, detection of systemic rheumatic diseases uses antinuclear antibodies (ANA) and antibodies against extractable nuclear antigen (ENA) in many major laboratory screening test.
- Thrombosis Disease: One of the most common autoimmune disease is anti-phospholipid syndrome (APS), it has features that include neurological complications, recurrent spontaneous abortions, phospholipid antibody expression, arterial and venous thrombosis. Antibodies against beta2-glycoprotein 1 (β2-GP1) and cardiolipin are useful diagnostic markers for APS.
- Vasculitis Disease: These are a group of diseases which are caused by the inflammatory destruction of blood vessels. Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCAs) are linked with systemic vasculitis and these act against non-nuclear cytoplasm in white blood cells. They are found to occur in two primary formats cANCA (PR3-Ab) or pANCA (MPO-Ab).
- Celiac Disease: It is an autoimmune mediated enteropathy which is gluten triggered in genetically susceptible people. Highly specific markers against celiac disease include antibodies against tissue transglutaminase (tTG) and recently gliadin antibodies (anti-DGP IgA or anti-DGP IgG) have also been effective.
- Thyroid Disease: Autoimmune thyroiditis (AIT) is the human diseases and its symptoms range from hypothyroid to hyperthyroid. The major autoantigen for AIT is thyroid peroxidase (TPO), also when diagnosing Graves’ disease (GD) then TSH receptor autoantibodies should be measured.
Popular Autoimmunity ELISA Kits
- Rheumatoid Factor Screen ELISA Kit
- Tissue Transglutaminase IgG ELISA Kit
- ß2-Glycoprotein I ELISA Kit
- Elastase ELISA Kit
- ANCA-C (PR3) ELISA Kit
- Gliadin IgA ELISA Kit
- Anti-dsDNA IgG ELISA Kit
- Thrombosis Screen ELISA Kit
- Prothrombin ELISA Kit
- Lactoferrin ELISA Kit
- Nucleosome ELISA Kit
- ENA ELISA Kit
- Scl-70 ELISA Kit
