Early diagnosis: New Opportunities for Predictive Use of Autoantibodies

"Predictive autoantibodies will have multiple uses in the future years. They may be valuable adjuncts in predicting the likelihood of developing clinical disease before the diagnostic signs are evident. They will have value in teaching us about the natural history of disease, particularly in providing information about the length of the prodromal period when the immune-mediated destructive process is silently underway", Noel R. Rose (Johns Hopkins University Baltimore) notes.

"Autoantibodies will help in better classification of disease. For example, the presence of the characteristic diabetes antibodies in adult patients with diabetes may indicate late onset autoimmune diabetes. Predictive autoantibodies may provide useful information about the prognosis and future course of diseases including the nature and severity of complications, and thereby help to design treatment. They may foretell the impending onset of a second or third autoimmune disease in patients with one autoimmune disorder. Finally, predictive autoantibodies may have value in selecting subjects for therapeutic trials in which the likelyhood of disease is much greater than in the general population.

In future years, broader application of predictive antibodies will be possible because of advances in proteomics and technologic improvement. These newer developments allow testing a large number of autoantibodies (multiplexing) in a relatively rapid and inexpensive manner ..."