Abstract
Prevalence and clinical significance of anticentromere antibodies (ACA) was investigated in sera of the patients with autoimmune liver diseases. We tested 16 sera from patients with lupoid hepatitis (group I), 22 sera with primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) (group II), 4 sera with Sjogren's syndrome (SjS) withdut liver dysfunction (group III), and 60 sera with non-autoimmune chronic liver diseases (group IV). We found ACA in 2 patients (12.5%) in group I, in 6 patients (27.3%) in group II, but in none of the patients in group III and IV. SjS were complicated in 5 of 8 patients (62.5%) positive for ACA. CREST syndrome (calcinosis, Raynaud's phenomenon, esophageal dysmotility, sclerodactyly and telangiectasia) was not revealed in any of those positive for ACA. Prevalence of ACA was higher in patients with PBC whose sera had low titer (less than 1:160) of antimitochondrial antibody (AMA) or no AMA. There was no patient with jaundice in those positive for ACA and their histological findings of the liver were mild. ACA was highly frequently detected in autoimmune liver diseases with SjS but not in SjS without liver dysfunction. It is suggested that ACA could be implicated in the pathogenesis of or as an epiphenomena of some group of autoimmune liver diseases.
