Clinical significance of serum autoantibodies in patients with sarcoidosis

Abstract

Background

The association between sarcoidosis and autoimmunity has been reported for years. However, the significance of autoantibodies in the pathophysiology and clinical management of sarcoidosis is not well understood. No autoantibodies that can be used as serologic biomarkers to diagnose the disease, monitor the state of the disease, and predict the prognosis of patients are established.

Methods

We performed a comprehensive analysis of serum autoantibodies and analyzed their associations with clinical features of sarcoidosis.

Results

Patients with systemic autoimmune rheumatic diseases-associated autoantibodies had a higher prevalence of advanced radiographic stage and consolidations in high-resolution computed tomography than patients without autoantibodies (p < .05). Age, sex, clinical history, pulmonary function tests, serum angiotensin-converting enzyme levels, rheumatoid factor, and the number of involved organs were not significantly different between the two groups.

Conclusions

There may be an association between autoantibodies and more advanced pulmonary lesions in patients with sarcoidosis. Further investigations are needed to establish the significance of autoantibodies.

Keywords:

• Sarcoidosis
• autoantibody
• autoimmune diseases
• sarcoid-like reaction
• consolidation

Author’s contributions

H. K. and M. S. planned the work that led to the article and drafted the paper. T. H. and S. T. conducted experiments. K. H. and K. Y. made substantive suggestions to interpret the results. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

None.