URINE AUTOANTIBODIES IN INTERSTITIAL CYSTITIS

Interstitial cystitis is a chronic bladder disease with certain featur es that suggest autoimmunity may play a role in initiating or maintain ing the disease process. We therefore determined whether immunoglobuli n fractions from 14 IC patient and 19 control urine specimens bound in vitro to primary cultures of human bladder epithelial cells, as well as epithelial cells from a variety of other tissues. Urine autoantibod ies that bound to normal human bladder epithelial cells were present i n 8 of 14 IC specimens (from 6 of 9 IC patients) as compared to 3 of 2 3 control specimens (from 2 of 17 control patients). These antibodies, which were usually also present at low titers in sera from these pers ons, bound to at least four nuclear or cytoplasmic antigens, with the specificity of autoantibodies from a given individual varying over tim e. The autoantibodies were not specific for normal or malignant bladde r epithelial cells, but bound to epithelial cells from a variety of ti ssues. These data show that anti-epithelial cell autoantibodies are pr esent in the urine of IC patients, but suggest that these antibodies a re not likely to be a primary cause of this disease.