Clinical relevance of circulating autoantibodies in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; A NAt hard to break

Paraskevi Kirgou; Sotirios I Sinis; Ilias E Dimeas; Ilias C Papanikolaou; Konstantinos Tatsis; Athena Gogali; Konstantinos I Gourgoulianis; Dimitrios P Bogdanos; Zoe Daniil

doi:10.3389/fmed.2022.964722

Clinical relevance of circulating autoantibodies in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; A NAt hard to break

Front Med (Lausanne). 2022 Aug 8:9:964722. doi: 10.3389/fmed.2022.964722. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Paraskevi Kirgou¹, Sotirios I Sinis¹, Ilias E Dimeas¹, Ilias C Papanikolaou², Konstantinos Tatsis³, Athena Gogali³, Konstantinos I Gourgoulianis¹, Dimitrios P Bogdanos⁴, Zoe Daniil¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Respiratory Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, School of Health Sciences, University of Thessaly, Biopolis, Larissa, Greece.
² Respiratory Medicine Department, Corfu General Hospital, Corfu, Greece.
³ Respiratory Medicine Department, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece.
⁴ Department of Rheumatology and Clinical Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, School of Health Sciences, University of Thessaly, Biopolis, Larissa, Greece.

Abstract

Patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis are screened for circulating autoantibodies as part of the initial interstitial lung disease workup. Management of seropositive idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is currently considered no different than that of lone idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Emerging data however suggest that the former may possess distinct characteristics in terms of pathophysiology, histopathology, prognosis and amenability to immunomodulation. In that context, the aim of our study was to evaluate the influence of autoantibody status on: (i) the decline of forced vital capacity; (ii) the decline of diffusing capacity of lung for carbon monoxide; and (iii) 3-year survival; in a cohort of 102 idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis patients. In a pilot sub-study, we also sought to evaluate whether changes in antibody status during disease course affect the aforementioned parameters by potentially reflecting activity of the autoimmunity component of the pro-fibrotic mechanism.

Keywords: antinuclear antibody; autoantibodies; autoimmunity; idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis; interstitial lung disease; pulmonary function test (PFTs).