Liver Cirrhosis Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Liver Cirrhosis, including details on alcohol, treatment, drugs, effects, causes.

False positive reactions for IgA and IgG anti-tissue transglutaminase antibodies in liver cirrhosis are common and method-dependent.

Villalta D, Crovatto M, Stella S, Tonutti E, Tozzoli R, Bizzaro N

Immunologia Clinica e Virologia, Azienda Ospedaliera, S. Maria degli Angeli, Via Montereale 24, 33170 Pordenone, Italy. danilo.villalta@aopn.fvg.it

BACKGROUND: Conflicting results were obtained in the assay of anti-transglutaminase (anti-tTG) autoantibodies in patients with chronic liver disease. In order to establish whether this was attributable to methodological differences, anti-tTG antibodies were assayed in a large number of patients suffering from liver cirrhosis (LC). METHODS: 54 patients with LC and 29 patients suffering from celiac disease (CD), used as controls, were tested for IgA and IgG anti-tTG with 11 different commercial methods. RESULTS: In the patients with LC, positivity ranged from 0% to 33.3% for IgA anti-tTG and from 0% to 11.1% for anti-tTG of the IgG class. The largest number of false positives was found with methods that used tTG in association with gliadin peptides as antigen substrate. A significant association was found between IgA anti-tTG antibodies and serum immunoglobulin concentration. CONCLUSIONS: The results of the various methods of assaying anti-tTG antibodies in patients with LC are highly variable, and the positives found are generally false positives, partly due to the high immunoglobulin concentration.

Published 6 June 2005 in Clin Chim Acta, 356(1): 102-9.
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