PMID: 9435367Jan 1, 1997Paper

Antineurotrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA) in the elderly

Medicina
F MoscardiM J Maxit

Abstract

Aging in animals and human beings is frequently accompanied by a disarray of the immune response. In subjects 70 years of age or older the frequency of some autoantibodies (anti-nuclear, RF, antithyroid anti-parietal cell and others) without any associated pathology is clearly increased when compared against a younger population. ANCA (antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies) is considered to be a good marker for necrotizing systemic vasculitis. This auto-antibody is known to show two patterns when investigated by indirect immunofluorescence on alcohol fixed normal neutrophils: c-ANCA (cytoplasmatic fluorescence) and p-ANCA (perinuclear fluorescence), each one associated with different pathologies. The purpose of this work was to investigate how frequently was ANCA found in subjects 70 years of age or older without evidence of any associated pathology. ANCA was investigated in 447 ambulatory patients from our hospital and the only requirement to be included was age. The ANCA+ patients were divided into having or not clinical suspicion of vasculitis, according to the medical charts we reviewed. The same methodology was applied to investigate the frequency of antinuclear antibodies (ANA+) without clinical evidence of any associated...Continue Reading

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