Low Prevalence of Anti-DFS70/LEDGF Antibodies in Patients with Dermatomyositis and Other Systemic Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases

Abstract

To the Editor: We read with interest the article by Mahler, et al 1. They screened a large number of sequential serum samples and sera from patients with various conditions as well as healthy individuals for anti-dense fine speckled 70 autoantibodies (anti-DFS70ab). Their data confirmed the observations that anti-DFS70ab are significantly more prevalent in healthy individuals than in patients with systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARD) and that, when they are positive, anti-DFS70ab in SARD are usually accompanied by additional SARD-related antibodies. However, their SARD cohort did not include patients with dermatomyositis (DM). We have confirmed that anti-DFS70ab were less prevalent in our DM cohort than in healthy individuals2. We also found some anti-DFS70ab-positive patients with DM who exhibited interesting patterns of change in autoantibody titers in longitudinal sera. From the serum bank of the Department of Dermatology, Nagoya University Hospital, we used sera from 116 Japanese patients with DM, 108 of which were used in our previous study on anti-TIF1-γ/α (155/140) and anti-Mi-2 autoantibodies3. The sera were from 103 patients with … Address correspondence to Dr. Y. Muro, Division of Connective Tissue Disease and Autoimmunity, Department of Dermatology, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine, 65 Tsurumai-cho, Showa-ku, Nagoya 466-8550, Japan. E-mail: ymuro{at}med.nagoya-u.ac.jp