Abstract
Serum anti-cardiolipin IgG, IgM antibodies (A-CL) were measured with an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in 87 patients with collagen diseases and related disorders. Twenty one patients including 15 scleroderma cases, which have been reported elsewhere, were positive. In this paper, the remaining 6 (1 male and 5 female) patients with dermatomyositis (DM), DM+Sjögren’s syndrom (SjS), cryoglobulinemia+SjS+Hashimoto’s disease, chilblain lupus, Behçet’s disease and livedo reticularis with summer ulceration were analyzed. Skin symptoms such as livedo, purpura and ulcer, which were secondary to the peripheral circulatory disturbance, were present in 2 cases, while none had any past histories of either fetal distress or frequent abortion. Antinuclear antibodies were positive in 5 cases except Behçet’s disease, patterns of which were homogeneous and speckled in 4 and nucleolar in 1. Two cases among them showed lupus-like symptoms, although they did not fulfill the criteria for diagnosis as SLE. These results suggest that A-CL positive patients have both some clinical features and laboratory findings in common which may form a syndrome classified as atypical and undifferentiated collagen diseases.
