Research Article Anti-hnRNP B1 (RA33) Autoantibodies Are Associated with the Clinical Phenotype in Russian Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis and Systemic Sclerosis

Copyright © 2014 Aleksey Maslyanskiy et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoproteins (hnRNPs) are potent autoantigenic targets in systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases (SARD). Loss of tolerance to the RA33 complex consisting of hnRNP A2 and its alternatively spliced variants B1 and B2 has been the interest of rheumatologists. A novel ELISA for the detection of anti-hnRNP B1 autoantibodies has been developed to investigate the prevalence thereof in 397 patients with SARD, including patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), spondyloarthropathy (SPA), juvenile chronic arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), systemic sclerosis (SSc), and Sjögren’s syndrome (SS), in comparison to 174 controls. Anti-hnRNP B1 autoantibodies were significantly more prevalent in patients with SARD than controls (47/397, 11.8 % versus 2/174, 1.1%