An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for antibodies against acid soluble skeletal muscle antigen in myasthenia gravis

An enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) system has been developed for measuring serum antibodies against citric-acid extract of human skeletal mu scles. With this assay, 80% of myasthenia patients with thymoma gave positi ve results. No sera from patients with neurological diseases other than mya sthenia gravis (MG) gave positive results. The result of this study indicat es that the ELISA system is useful as an adjunct for the diagnosis of MG pa rticularly in the patients associated with thymoma and that the ELISA metho d can also be used as a prognostic marker following thymectomy in patients with MG.