Clinical performance of AMA-M2, anti-gp210 and anti-sp100 antibody levels in primary biliary cholangitis: When detected by multiplex bead-based flow fluorescent immunoassay.

BACKGROUND AND AIM: Primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) is a chronic autoimmune cholangiopathy, characterized by the presence of some autoantibodies in the serum. This study aimed to evaluate the clinical significance of AMA-M2, anti-gp210 and anti-sp100 antibody levels detected by multiplex bead-based flow fluorescent immunoassay (MBFFI) in PBC.

METHODS: This study cohort included 238 PBC patients, 81 autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) patients, 62 systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) patients, and 118 healthy controls. Serum AMA-M2, anti-gp210 and anti-sp100 antibody were detected by MBFFI and immunoblotting assay (IBT). The relationship between three antibody levels and cirrhosis, liver function, cholestasis markers and therapeutic effect to ursodesoxycholic acid (UDCA) was evaluated in PBC.

RESULTS: MBFFI were presented good coincidence rate (87.39%-95.38%) with IBT. The level of AMA-M2, anti-gp210 and anti-sp100 antibodies in PBC patients were higher than other disease group and healthy controls (p ＜ .01). When compared with the healthy controls group, the AUC of AMA-M2, anti-gp210 and anti-sp100 antibodies were 0.9245, 0.7619, and 0.6789, respectively. In addition, gp210 antibody levels have diagnostic value in patients with liver cirrhosis (AUC: 0.7567). We found that when combine detect these three antibodies, the sensitivity was higher than individually detection. High level of serum anti-gp210 antibody could be related to worse liver function and more severe cholestasis in PBC patients. Moreover, serum antibody levels may decrease or remained flat in patients who responded well to UDCA.

CONCLUSION: The detection of AMA-M2, anti-gp210 and anti-sp100 antibody levels by MBFFI showed good performance in the diagnosis of PBC. Serum anti-gp210 antibody level is related to cirrhosis, poor liver function and severe cholestasis in PBC.