Background/Purpose: Takayasu arteritis (TA) may be difficult to diagnose since  diagnostic biomarkers have not been established so far. In a previous study, we could show the presence of autoantibodies against the human ferritin heavy chain protein (HFC) in sera of patients with giant cell arteritis (GCA) and/or polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR).  Therefore, we studied the presence of autoantibodies against HFC in TA.

Methods: We established 7 ELISAs for the detection of autoantibodies against HFC. As autoantigen we used the full recombinant HFC expressed by E. coli or one of six different peptides of the HFC: 1-18Aa (purity 98.8%), 19-45Aa (purity 98.8%), 52-78Aa purity 98.3%), 79-104Aa (purity 98.8%), 105-143Aa (purity 98.4%), 145-183Aa (purity 98.5%). We collected sera of 43 patients with TA, 36 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), 77 patients age >65yrs, 35 patients with arteriosclerosis, 118 sera of fever patients with underlying chronic infectious and malignant diseases, which are known for having unspecific autoantibodies, and 50 blood donors’ sera served as controls.

Results: The best results were obtained by using ferritin pedtides as antigens. By combining different ELISAs detecting autoantibodies against HFC peptide 19-44A, 79-104A and 105-144A, we were able to detect ferritin peptide antibodies in 27/43 (63%) TA patients. For early TA, the frequency was lower than in early GCA and PMR (previous study up to 92%). In the controls, 0/100 (0%) of the blood donors, 10/36 (28%) of the patients with SLE, 7/77 (9%) of the patients with age >65yrs, 4/35 (11%) of the patients with arteriosclerosis and 24/118 (20%) of the fever patients were positive.

Conclusion: Considering the lack of biomarkers for TA, autoantibodies against peptides of HFC could be helpful as a marker for TA.

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ACR Meeting Abstracts - https://acrabstracts.org/abstract/high-frequency-of-ferritin-autoantibodies-in-takayasu-arteritis/