ANALYSIS OF ANTIGENS RECOGNIZED BY AUTOANTIBODIES IN HERPES-GESTATIONIS - USEFULNESS OF IMMUNOBLOTTING USING A FUSION PROTEIN REPRESENTING AN EXTRACELLULAR DOMAIN OF THE 180 KD BULLOUS PEMPHIGOID ANTIGEN

Herpes gestationis (HG) is a ran pregnancy-associated disease. The aim of this study was to compare various immunohistochemical and immunobi ochemical techniques with respect to their diagnostic sensitivity for HG. We studied 43 HG sera; only half of these reacted with the basemen t membrane zone (BMZ) with both indirect immunofluorescence (IF) and c omplement IF of normal human skin. 81% of the sera reacted with the ep idermal side of I M NaCl-split skin. In general, titers of anti-BMZ an tibodies in HG sera were lower than those in bullous pemphigoid (BP) s era. Immunoblot analysis of human epidermal extracts showed that 51% o f HG sera recognized the 180 kD BP antigen (BP180) and 26% recognized the 230 kD BP antigen (BP230). We also studied the reactivity of HG se ra with fusion proteins representing either the NC16a domain of human BP180 or the C-terminal region of mouse BP230. Whereas 79% of HG sera reacted with the BP180 fusion protein, only 5% recognized the BP230 fu sion protein. Our results suggest that indirect IF of 1 M NaCl-split s kin and immunoblotting of a fusion protein representing the BP180 NC16 a domain are more sensitive techniques for the diagnosis of HG than co nventional and complement IF or immunoblotting of crude epidermal extr acts.