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. 2024 Dec;43(12):3781-3787.
doi: 10.1007/s10067-024-07190-1. Epub 2024 Oct 23.

Autoantibody against aquaporin-5 may be a new diagnostic biomarker for primary Sjögren's syndrome

Xiaoyu Wang  1 , Hong Wu  2 , Bing Zhong  1 , Ligai Zhang  2 , Yong Wang  3
Affiliations

Autoantibody against aquaporin-5 may be a new diagnostic biomarker for primary Sjögren's syndrome

Xiaoyu Wang et al. Clin Rheumatol. 2024 Dec.

Abstract

The study aims to assess the diagnostic and clinical significance of autoantibodies against aquaporin-1 (anti-AQP1) and aquaporin-5 (anti-AQP5) in primary Sjögren's syndrome (pSS). A total of 163 participants were categorized into three groups: pSS group, other connective tissue diseases (CTD) group, and healthy control (HC) group. The levels of anti-AQP1 and anti-AQP5 autoantibodies in serum were determined using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), and clinical data from patients were collected for statistical analysis. Our results showed that the level of anti-AQP1 in the pSS group was higher than in the HC group (P < 0.05), and no significant difference was observed between the pSS group and the CTD group (P > 0.05). ROC showed that the anti-AQP1 had no diagnostic value for pSS (P > 0.05). The anti-AQP5 level of 39 healthy adults was all below the cut-off value (14.10 ng/ml) (P < 0.05). The level of anti-AQP5 in the pSS group was higher than the CTD group (P < 0.05), the AUC was 0.86 (95% CI 0.80-0.93), with a sensitivity of 0.95 (95% CI 0.87-0.99) and a specificity of 0.70 (95% CI 0.58-0.84). No correlation was found between anti-AQP5 levels and the EULAR primary Sjögren's syndrome disease activity index score, anti-SSA, anti-SSB, antinuclear antibodies, rheumatoid factor, anti-ds-DNA, salivary gland flow rate, complement 3, and lymphocyte count in pSS samples (P > 0.05), respectively. Therefore, the elevated anti-AQP5 may emerge as a novel diagnostic biomarker for pSS patients due to high sensitivity and specificity.

Keywords: Anti-aquaporin autoantibody; Biomarker; Primary Sjögren’s syndrome.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: The study was granted approval by the Ethics Committee of the First Affiliated Hospital of Army Medical University (No: (A) KY2021075). Informed consent was obtained from all the patients before conducting the study. Disclosures: None.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Subject serum concentrations of anti-AQP1 and anti-AQP5. CTD, connective tissue diseases; HC, healthy control. *P < 0.05, statistically significant difference
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
ROC curves of anti-AQP1 and anti-AQP5. HC, healthy control; CTD, connective tissue diseases; pSS-HC, pSS group as the case group, HC as control group; pSS-CTD, pSS group as the case group, CTD as control group. *P < 0.05, statistically significant difference
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