Antinuclear antibodies in healthy population: Positive association with abnormal tissue metabolism, inflammation and immune dysfunction

Abstract

Antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) are a spectrum of autoantibodies that react with cell nucleus structures. ANA assay is a screening test for the diagnosis of autoimmune disease. Although many patients with positive ANA did not develop autoimmune diseases, it is unclear whether high concentrations of ANA have potential damage to the body. In this study, we conducted an epidemiological survey of ANAs in healthy population, and further examined the associations of ANA with clinical laboratory indicators, inflammation indicators and immune function indicators in a large health checkup population-based cohort. We found the positive rate of ANA was 7.09%, of which the positive rate of female (10.2%) was higher than that of male (4.6%). Moreover, our data showed that ANA positive population present a higher rate of metabolic abnormalities than control group. We further detected the inflammatory and immune-related indicators of ANA positive population, and found that high ANA was correlated with inflammatory and immune dysfunction. In conclusion, our results indicated that the positive rate of ANA was high in healthy population. Moreover, high levels of ANAmight be involved in the metabolic abnormalities, inflammation and immune dysfunction. Thus, ANA testing should be routine for healthy people, and to avoid misdiagnosis, those who had clinical symptoms should be further examined for the subtype of ANA present in the serum.

Keywords: Anti-nuclear antibodies; Clinical characteristics; Immune function; Inflammation.