Author:
MAHIR Loubna,ezzahra HSAI Fatima,DRISSI BOURHANBOUR Asmaa,EL BAKKOURI Jalila
Abstract
Systemic lupus erythematosus is a severe autoimmune disease preferentially affecting the female sex. Because of the great polymorphism of the disease, the diagnosis of lupus must first be confirmed on the basis of several clinico-biological criteria. Among the biological criteria is the presence of anti-dsDNA (double stranded Deoxyribonucleic acid) antibodies. The detection of these autoantibodies requires the use of techniques with high sensitivity and specificity. We evaluated the performance of the immunoblot technique (ANA-IB) in comparison with the indirect immunofluorescence technique (CLIFT) in the detection of anti-dsDNA antibodies in 100 sera. This comparison led to the conclusion that CLIFT remains the reference method for the detection of these antibodies and cannot be replaced by ANA-IB. However, their concomitant use increases the specificity of the test.