“These trends in ANA positivity will have to be confirmed in other cohorts and the implications of this finding evaluated in parallel with prevalence and incidence of autoimmune diseases will need to be further explored,” she says.
Stuart Kaplan, MD, chief of rheumatology at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside, N.Y., also comments by email, “ANA is a very non-specific test which, while found in many autoimmune conditions, does not by itself necessarily indicate and autoimmune disease. A positive ANA can be found in many different types of inflammatory and infectious conditions, including viruses.”
“Thus,” he tells Reuters Health, “although the finding of an increased incidence of positive ANA is very interesting, further investigation is required to explore possible explanations for this and one can not automatically assume that autoimmune diseases are on the rise.”
Reference
- Dinse GE, Parks CG, Weinberg CR, et al. Increasing prevalence of antinuclear antibodies in the United States. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2020 Apr 7. doi: 10.1002/art.41214. [Epub ahead of print]
