VALIDATION OF AN AUTOANTIBODY SIGNATURE FOR THE DIAGNOSIS OF RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS IN AN INDEPENDENT COHORT

In order to characterize the autoantibody repertoire in patients with RA, we performed in an earlier study a large-scale screen against 3,068 antigens using the bead-based Luminex xMAP technology. The autoantibody signature of 74 patients with an established RA was compared against 71 healthy controls. Antigens with high reactivity were selected and used to develop biomarker panels with improved sensitivity and specificity. Having defined this way the autoantibody repertoire of RA patients the goal of this study was to validate the autoantibody reactivity of RA patient samples analyzing 116 pre-treatment samples of early RA derived from the HITHARD treatment study (1).