2. Immune complexes and diseases

Abstract

In the present study, the amounts of IC of SLE patients significantly correlated with the disease activity, but it neither correlated with the degree of renal disorder nor anti-DNA antibody activities. In SDS-PAGE and immunoblotting, IC of SLE patients contained many antigens at 45K, 37K, 30K in addition to DNA, Sm, RNP and CRP. IC of RA patients consisted mainly of IgG-RF and IgM-RF. Lack of correlation between IC and serological factors, and multiplicities of pathologic features would be concerned with the molecular size of IC, nature of antigen and subclass of antibodies. To clarify the clinical role of IC, further study is required to characterize the component parts of antigen. © 1989, The Japanese Society of Internal Medicine. All rights reserved.