Measurement of gp210 autoantibodies in sera of patients with primary biliary cirrhosis

Primary biliary cirrhosis (PBC) is an autoimmune liver disease with unknown etiology. Patients with PBC have antimitochondrial autoantibodies (AMA) and additionally 50% of them have antinuclear antibodies (ANA). A 15–amino acid fragment (DRKASPPSGLWSPAY) from the C‐terminal part of the nuclear envelope glycoprotein gp210 has been proposed as one of the antigenic targets for ANA. The aim of this work was to develop an immunoenzymatic assay for determination of gp210 autoantibodies using for its binding a synthetic pentadecapeptide derived from the gp210 amino acid sequence and to determine level of these autoantibodies in sera of patients with PBC and other autoimmune liver diseases from Poland. Polystyrene microtitration plates coated with the synthetic peptide were consecutively incubated with diluted sera, anti‐human immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies conjugated with horseradish peroxidase, and with tetramethylobenzidine. Optical density (OD) was read at 450 nm. The mean values of the intra‐ and interassay of variation coefficients of the test were 4.1 and 10.2%, respectively. Anti‐gp210 was detected in 44% of PBC patients and in 6% of patients with PSC. The results were negative for healthy blood donors and other controls. The specificity of the test was 99%, so the anti‐gp‐210 autoantibodies estimated on DRKASPPSGLWSPAY can be a reliable marker of PBC. J. Clin. Lab. Anal. 21:227–231, 2007. © 2007 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.