Study Says Sjögren’s Patients Have a High Specificity for a Novel Antibody

Dr. van Daele

“What we demonstrated is that even though the antibody is generated against the DRG, the target is actually not the neuron itself,” he says. “What that suggests is that the potential pathogenesis of underlying neuropathies in Sjögren’s syndrome might be somewhat indirect and targeted against perineuronal satellite cells and not the underlying DRG neuron.”

This last finding may give insight into debilitating neuropathic disorders, says Paul van Daele, MD, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Internal Medicine, Section of Allergy and Clinical Immunology at Erasmus University Medical Center in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. “If the pathogenesis of polyneuropathy in autoimmune disease is further elucidated, it may lead to new therapies to prevent complications,” he says.

Dr. van Daele noted that it’s often difficult to predict which patients with Sjögren’s syndrome will suffer from complications and that it is also important to know whether the presence of the autoantibodies precedes the occurrence of polyneuropathy. “If that is the case, then the autoantibody can be used as a prognostic marker for one of the complications of Sjögren’s disease,” he says. “Although I don’t believe the autoantibodies to be causal, this has to be further examined. If they are causal, anti-B cell therapy or anti-plasma cell therapy could be useful in the prevention of neuropathy.”

Dr. Birnbaum also underscored the need for more studies, saying that the current results “provide a strong rationale for further mechanistic studies to test if whether the specific neuropathy in Sjögren’s syndrome may not be mediated by neural cell damage” but “by indirect pathways mediated by non-neuronal cells.” He and colleagues are planning larger studies to further examine how the antibody targets the perineuronal satellite cells.

Mary Beth Nierengarten is a freelance medical journalist based in Minneapolis.

Reference

1. Birnbaum J, Hoke A, Lalji A, et al. Brief report: Anti-calponin 3 autoantibodies: A newly identified specificity in patients with Sjögren’s Syndrome. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2018 Oct;70(10):1610–1616.