Prevalence of anti-glycoprotein V in patients with primary immune thrombocytopenia

Abstract

Background Glycoprotein (GP) V is a well-characterized immune target in Varicella-associated and drug-induced thrombocytopenia. Recent studies have focused on the involvement of anti-GP V in the mechanism of platelet clearance as a recent paradigm in the pathophysiology of immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), rather than other anti-GPs like GP IIb/IIIa, GP Ib/IX and less frequently GP Ia/IIa. Objectives This study was conducted to determine the prevalence of anti-GP V in adult ITP Egyptian patients and to detect its impact on the outcome in these patients. Patients and methods This was a cross-sectional study in which, using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay, the level of serum anti-GP antibodies V was measured in the peripheral blood of 90 patients with primary ITP compared with 20 age-matched and sex-matched normal healthy controls and its relationship with clinical, laboratory parameters, and response to treatment. Results Our study revealed that anti-GP antibodies V level in the cases group was statistically significantly higher as compared with the control group (P=0.005). There was weak statistically significant positive correlation between platelet count and anti-GP V level antibodies in the cases group after treatment with a P value of 0.0548. However, the level of anti-GP V did not show significant correlation with the bleeding score (P=0.123), degree of thrombocytopenia (P=0.967), sex (P=0.067), bone marrow findings (P=0.448), spleen size (P=0.992), or with the response to steroid therapy (P=0.171). Conclusion This study points out that GP V is a frequent immune target in ITP and that the detection of GP-specific autoantibodies being of value in the pathogenesis of ITP. We recommend that further studies including GP V are required before ITP treatment can be tailored according to platelet autoantibody specificity.