In the presence of a positive ANA screening test, is it always necessary to search for antibody specificity?
The variety of autoantibody targets in systemic rheumatic diseases is very wide and continues to grow almost weekly (2;3) . The IIF-ANA screening test is able to reveal more than 100 different types of autoantibodies, only a portion of which has a validated clinical association and only about 30-40 of these can be revealed by routine laboratory assays. From a cost-benefit point of view, therefore, it is not possible to detect the target specificity in all positive ANA cases.
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