Immunology of antiphospholipid antibodies and their interaction with plasma proteins

Abstract

'Antiphospholipid' (aPL) antibodies are of clinical importance because of their strong association with vascular thrombosis, recurrent pregnancy loss, thrombocytopenia and other clinical manifestations like livedo reticularis, chorea and cardiac valvular disease. While aPL antibodies have traditionally been thought to be directed against negatively-charged (anionic) phospholipids current evidence suggests that these autoantibodies recognise protein-phospholipid complexes or the proteins themselves. A number of candidate proteins have been investigated with the two most extensively researched being beta 2-glycoprotein I and prothrombin.