Quote:
Originally Posted by dogwalker
I have SFN and "the antibody profile of a lupus patient" and am followed by a rheumie as well as neuro, but have no signs of inflammation in blood work, skin biopsy, or muscle biopsy. My CRP and sed rate are always at the low end of normal. Nothing but my ANA, anti-dsDna, and anti-Ro come up positive.
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That is strange - do you have any non-immunological clinical signs of SLE?
My guess is that in some auto-immune diseases there may be tissue damage leading to release of nuclear antigens (Ro and the other ANA targets). These intra-nuclear antigens are not usually "seen" by the immune system so there will be production of antibodies specific for them.
If I am right all this says is that there has been some tissue damage - an elevated ANA titre confirms this and may be important in a diagnostic sense but does not say much about the underlying pathology of the auto-immune disease.