Abstract
Background The anti-Ro52 antibody, found in numerous systemic autoimmune conditions, is one of the most common autoantibodies in inflammatory myositis. It is known to be associated with interstitial lung disease (ILD) and to coexist with anti-Jo-11. There are two spliced forms: Ro52α and Ro52β. Ro52β was originally reported in 1995 as a spliced form of Ro52α in the human heart2. Ro52β antigen cDNA has a defective exon 4, which encodes part of an autoepitope hotspot2. Objectives We investigated the clinical and laboratory characteristics of anti-Ro52α and anti-Ro52β. We also analyzed the characteristics of anti-Ro52α/β within each coexisting inflammatory myositis specific autoantibody (MSA) group to reduce the influences of coexisting MSA characteristics. Methods Among 229 dermatomyositis (DM) and polymyositis (PM) patients, 167 patients (DM 152, PM 10, juvenile DM 5) fulfilled the criteria of Bohan and Peter, and 62 clinical amyopathic DM cases fulfilled the criteria of Sontheimer. Anti-Ro52α and anti-Ro52β antibodies were detected by ELISA. Results 46 of the 229 patients were anti-Ro52α-positive (20%). ILD was a frequent complication in the anti-Ro52α-positive patients (35/42: 76%) (P=0.0016), and anti-Ro52α was highly positive in the anti-aminoacyl tRNA synthetase (ARS) antibody-positive group (19/32: 60%) (P Of the 46 anti-Ro52α-positive patients, 26 patients were anti-Ro52β-positive. No patient was only anti-Ro52β positive. The anti-Ro52α-positive and anti-Ro52β-positive groups were older than the anti-Ro52α-only-positive group (P=0.009), and the average of maximum creatine kinase was higher in both of the positive groups (P=0.065). The 6 patients without coexisting MSA were all both anti-Ro52α-positive and anti-Ro52β-positive (P=0.03) (Table 2). Conclusion Anti-Ro52 is highly positive when anti-ARS antibodies are present, but it is not anti-Jo-1-specific. Anti-Ro52 positivity is not associated with elevated risk of ILD in any of the MSA-positive groups. The anti-Ro52β antibody might be an indicator of myositis.
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