Measurement of Anti‐DNA Antibodies by Elisa: A Comparative Study with Crithidia and a Farr Assay

&NA; One hundred and twenty six sera from 116 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and from 51 control patients were assayed for the presence of anti‐DNA antibodies, using a commercial enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Fifty three sera (42%) from SLE patients were positive and a further 13 sera (10%) fell in the ‘equivocal’ positive range. Three control sera were positive. In a standard 14C DNA Farr assay, 67 sera (53%) from SLE patients were positive. One control serum was weakly positive. There was a good linear correlation between absorption in the ELISA and the 14C DNA binding result (r = 0.73). Results in the ELISA and Farr assays were concordant in 96 of the 126 SLE sera, and 47 of 51 control sera. Sequential sera from a further 6 patients with fluctuating clinical activity of SLE showed similar patterns of change of anti‐DNA antibodies in both assays. The ELISA was more sensitive than the Crithidia luciliae immunofluorescence assay which detected 44 positive sera (35%) in the SLE group. These results suggest that this ELISA assay may be a useful alternative to the Crithidia assay or an effective screen prior to testing in the more technically difficult and time consuming Farr assay for the measurement of anti‐DNA antibodies.

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