Evaluation of the relationship of anti nuclear antibody (ANA) anddense fine speckled staining pattern (DFS70-like) with clinical outcomes in general internal medicine outpatient clinic

Autoantibody tests are of great importance in the diagnosis and follow-up of the treatment of autoimmune diseases. Autoantibodies called Anti Nuclear Antibody (ANA) against the cell nucleus are important diagnostic criterionin connective tissue diseases.The Indirect Immunofluorescence (IIF) test has been widely used since 1954 to detectANA directed against these targets. We screened 1500 patients with who presented to the general internal medicine outpatient clinic with rheumatologic complaints during 24 months between 2019 and 2021 for ANA IIF staining pattern.In this retrospective study we aimed to identify patients with Dense fine speckled-DFS70 staining and immunoblot-confirmed anti-DFS70 positive patients and to evaluate the relationship with clinical findings. Of the 1500 patients screened in the study, 111 patients were found to have IIF Dense fine speckled staining pattern (DFS70) and the anti-DFS70 antibody was confirmed by immunoblot method in 40 patients. Our study group consisted of 71 patients with ANA IIF Dense fine- speckled DFS70 staining pattern, 40 patients with confirmed anti-DFS70 antibodies, and 30 ANA-negative patients in the control group. The patients' rheumatologic clinical query and laboratory tests were evaluated retrospectively between the groups. The general complaint of the patients with dense fine speckled staining (DFS70-like) was diffuse body pain. Of the 40 patients in our study group, 4 patients (28.6%) were diagnosed with fibromyalgia, 3 with probable SLE (21.5%), 2 with urticaria (14.4%), 1 patient (7.1%) with multiple sclerosis, 1 patient (7.1%) with myasthenia gravis, 1patient (7.1%) with sarcoidosis, 1 patient (7.1%) with Graves' disease, and 1 patient (7.1%) with pulmonary thromboembolism. In the literature, the association of Anti- DFS70 positive patients with rheumatologic disease diagnosis is controversial and there are results associated with different systemic inflammatory and allergic diseases. Key Words: Anti Nuclear Antibody, autoimmune diseases, DFS-70, anti-DFS70