Pancreas New Antibody May Aid Diagnosis of Autoimmune Pancreatitis

research highlights pancreas new antibody may aid diagnosis of autoimmune pancreatitis

an antibody present in almost all patients in the current study, the researchers with autoimmune pancreatitis may be screened a random library of dodecamer Normal the most specific serologic marker yet peptides with pooled immunoglobulins pancreas identified for this disease, report antonio purified from serum samples from Puccetti and colleagues in The New 20 patients with focal autoimmune . Puccetti England Journal of Medicine. pancreatitis. the most promising a Focal the pathogenesis of autoimmune peptide they identified was recognized autoimmune pancreatitis is not well understood, by the serum from 18 of 20 patients with pancreatitis and although an autoimmune etiology autoimmune pancreatitis (90%), whereas mage courtesy of has been suggested, it has never been only 4 of 40 serum samples from patients i proved.Focal autoimmune pancreatitis, with pancreatic cancer (10%) contained which occurs in about 60% of cases, is such antibodies. serum samples from through a mechanism of molecular difficult to distinguish from pancreatic patients with other pancreatic diseases or mimicry,” says Puccetti. cancer. “the identification of a serologic from healthy controls showed no reactivity as a few patients with pancreatic marker for autoimmune pancreatitis to the peptide. cancer did harbor antibodies against PBP, remains a major goal in clinical research,” the researchers found that the sequence serologic testing for these antibodies alone stress Puccetti and co-workers. in of this peptide was very similar to a cannot reliably discriminate between this particular, these researchers were portion of the PBP protein of Helicobacter condition and autoimmune pancreatitis. looking for a serologic test that would pylori and also to part of the human Further work is needed to establish the be able to discriminate this disease from uBr2 protein, which is highly expressed clinical utility of this new serologic test for pancreatic cancer. in pancreatic acinar cells. overall, after the diagnosis of autoimmune pancreatitis. these investigators, from the the inclusion of an independent group of next, Puccetti explains, “the test needs to universities of verona and Genoa, have patients for validation, these researchers be validated in a larger cohort of patients been working on the identification of reported that 33 of 35 patients with from different countries with different novel disease-specific autoantigen targets autoimmune pancreatitis (94%) had genetic backgrounds.” Puccetti and his associated with autoimmune diseases. the serum antibodies against PBP, whereas research group also plan to test patients’ peptide library approach they use “allows 5 of 110 patients with pancreatic cancer sera before and after steroid treatment, the detection of peptides recognized by (5%) tested positive for such antibodies. and will further investigate the putative the sera immunoglobulins of patients interestingly, 22 of the 35 patients with role of H. pylori in the pathogenesis of suffering from the disease of interest,” autoimmune pancreatitis also had autoimmune pancreatitis. explains Puccetti. in earlier studies, these antibodies against uBr2, which were Joana Osório researchers have successfully used this not detected in serum from patients with approach in diseases such as systemic other pancreatic diseases. together, these Original article Frulloni, L. et al. Identification of a novel sclerosis, sjögren syndrome, celiac disease findings “suggest that H. pylori may be antibody associated with autoimmune pancreatitis. N. Engl. J. Med. 361, 2135–2142 (2009) and Cogan syndrome. involved in the pathogenesis of the disease