Loading...
Clinicians have long been aware that some patients with suspected systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) have a long, gradual onset of disease. Only after months, or even years, do sufficient clinical and laboratory criteria become evident to confirm the diagnosis. What happens before the onset of clinical disease has not been fully elucidated. These authors had a unique opportunity to study the prediagnosis development of autoantibodies in the sera of 130 patients who developed SLE; the patients were identified from among more than 5 million U.S. armed forces personnel with stored sera.
The authors found that antinuclear antibodies, antiphospholipid antibodies, and anti-Ro and anti-La antibodies were present before more SLE-specific ones, such …