MULTIVARIATE STATISTICAL COMPARISON OF AUTOANTIBODY-REPERTOIRES (WESTERN BLOTS) BY DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS

A procedure for the quantification and comparison of complex (auto-) a ntibody repertoires of many individuals is described. It is based on m ultivariate statistical analyses of densitometric data of individual s taining patterns, in this case Western blots. Implementation of algori thms can be based on standard software and hardware components. This p rocedure allows (i) the quantitative assessment of the reproducibility and reliability of any electrophoretic procedure, such as for the pro duction of the immunological substrate, (ii) the statistical compariso n of any group of staining patterns, e.g., derived from patients with autoimmune diseases or normal controls, (iii) the identification of th e bands that contribute most to the differences between such groups, a nd (iv) the determination whether an unknown individual sample belongs to a known group. A statistical analysis of autoantibody repertoires has important possible applications: it detects spontaneous or therape utically induced changes of repertoires, it identifies regions of inte rest, it supports the isolation of relevant antigens, and it will also be helpful in the diagnosis of autoimmune diseases.