Introduction: Only few series have reported the association of autoimmune hepatitis with antiphospholipid antibodies. The aim of our study is to investigate the frequency of these antibodies in a series of autoimmune hepatitis and to search for a correlation with clinical, biological or histological characteristics.
Material and methods: Antiphospholipid were investigated in 24 patients with well defined autoimmune hepatitis. Characteristics were compared between antiphopholipids positive and negative patients. Characteristics of our patients were also compared toward cases collected in a literature review.
Results: The frequency of antiphospholipid antibodies is of 70.8% in our series. Four patients had a well defined antiphospholid syndrome. Seven patients had a systemic lupus erythematosus in the antiphospholipid group whereas none in the antiphospholipid negative group. The frequency of the different antiphopholipid antibodies was: IgG ACL (52.9%), IgM APE (52.9%), ACC (43.7%), IgG Abeta2GP1 (41.2%). We found no correlation between hypergammaglobulinemia and the presence or the isotype of antiphospholipid antibodies. Clinical presentation and outcome as biological and histological parameters were similar in both groups.
Conclusion: Our study report a high frequency of antiphospholipids antibodies in autoimmune hepatitis patients. However we found no clinical, biological or histological correlation with the presence of antiphospholipids. Further longitudinal studies on larger cohorts should clarify the association between antiphospholipid antibodies and autoimmune hepatitis and potential therapeutic issues.