Do patients with demyelinating disease have antibodies against human glial cells in their sera?
Cell-type-specific markers and indirect immunofluorescence were used to study immunoglobulin binding to glial cells in dissociated cell cultures of human foetal optic nerve, spinal cord and dorsal root ganglion in sera from patients with demyelinating diseases, other neurological diseases and normal controls. These various sera proved to be indistinguishable in that almost all of them contained immunoglobulin which bound weakly to all oligodendrocytes and fibroblasts, 5-25% of astrocytes and about 50% of Schwann cells.
