Clinical application of dense fine spot anti-nuclear antibody in children with autoimmune diseases / 中华实用儿科临床杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To analyze the differences of the clinical characteristics and laboratory indexes in children with positive dense fine spot (DFS) type anti-nuclear antibody, and thereby to explore the value of positive DFS in the diagnosis of immunological diseases.Methods:Among 9 613 cases who were routinely tested for antinuclear antibody (ANA) from August 2017 to February 2020, there were 197 cases with DFS positive, who were subjected to a retrospective analysis.These patients were divided into the autoimmune diseases (AID) group (39 cases) and the non-AID group (158 cases) according to clinical diagnosis.Healthy children in the same physical examination were used as healthy control group (40 cases). T test was applied to analyze the differences of humoral immunity markers between AID and non-AID groups.What′s more, DFS positive patients in different clinical departments, initial symptom and the part of body were further compared. Results:Among 9 613 children tested for autoantibodies, 2 654 (27.61%) were ANA positive, with the highest detection rate of the spotted type and 197 DFS positive cases, accoun-ting for 7.42% of ANA positive children; 97 DFS positive male patients accounted for 8.20% (97/1 183 case) of ANA positive male patients, 100 DFS positive female patients accounted for 6.80% (100/1 471 cases) of ANA positive female patients, and there was no significant difference in the positive rate.The departments with high positive ANA detection included the nephrology department (27.88%) and the rheumatology department (24.83%). The departments with a higher ANA positive rate in DFS positive children included the gastroenterology department (13.25%) and the infectious department (11.76%). Among the children with DFS antibody positive, 39 cases had AID, among which 38 cases had organ-specific AID, and juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) had the highest detection rate in 13 cases.The diseases with a high DFS positive rate in 158 non-AID cases included allergic purpura (46 cases). Serum immunoglobulin (IgG) level in the AID group was significantly lower than this in the non-AID group, serum IgM and C 4 levels in AID children were significantly lower than those in the non-AID group and healthy control group, and the serum IgA level of DFS positive group was significantly higher than that of children in the healthy control group.All children with DFS antibody positive had no specific autoantibodies. Conclusions:DFS antibody positive is important for the diagnosis of systemic AID in children.The combined detection with the DFS, other autoimmunity antibody index, humoral immune function index contributes to the early differential diagnosis of autoimmune diseases in children.