Autoantibodies in human chronic graft-versus-host disease after hematopoietic cell transplantation

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) and graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) are th ought to have common immunopathologic features and previous studies have re ported that 5.2 to 81% of patients with chronic GVHD after allogeneic hemat opoietic cell transplant have antimitochondrial antibodies (AMA). nr, studi ed a total of 89 patients with chronic GVHD and 60 controls for AMA reactiv ity by ELISA and immunoblotting using recombinant PDC-E2, BCOADC-E2 and OGD C-E2, immunoblot ting of beef heart mitochondrial proteins, and reactivity to nuclei, smooth muscle (ASMA), ribonucleoprotein JO-1, extractable nuclea r antigen, nuclear proteins SSA/ SSB, ribonucleic P proteinase III, cardiol ipin (ACA), liver kidney microsomal, thyroid microsomal, myeloperoxidase, a nd the reactivity of rheumatoid factor. A subset of 60 chronic GVHD sera we re tested for reactivity to gp210 and LBR Finally, liver tissue from patien ts with chronic CVHD and PBC was studied by immunohistochemistry to determi ne whether there was comparable abnormal apical staining: of biliary epithe lial cells using PDC-E2-specific monoclonal antibodies. Surprisingly, there were no AMA found in the sera from the 89 patients with chronic GVBD. Revi ew of published data on AMA in GVHD suggests that previous results were pri marily false positives. In contrast, sera from the patients with GVHD did h ave a variety of other autoantibodies and, in particular, 20/89 (22.4%) pos itive ANA 23/89 (25.8%) positive ASMA, and 9/89 (10.1%) positive ACA. The o ther autoantibodies assayed were not statistically different from controls. Finally, abnormal biliary epithelial luminal staining of bile ducts was fo und, as expected, in Liver tissue of patients with PBC but was absent in ch ronic GVHD. (C) 1999 Academic Press.