THE CLINICAL UTILITY OF ANTIHISTONE ANTIBODIES

Autoantibodies reactive with denatured histones and with epitopes requ iring the native histone-DNA structure in chromatin have been measured by many techniques. The presence of antichromatin antibodies is usefu l in diagnosing systemic lupus erythematosus and in diagnosing lupus i nduced by procainamide and certain other drugs such as quinidine, ison iazid, sulfasalazine and acebutolol. Ln contrast, antibodies to denatu red histones do not appear to be diagnostically useful at this time.