Anti-basal ganglia antibody abnormalities in Sydenham chorea

Abstract Anti-basal ganglia antibodies (ABGA) were measured in nine children with Sydenham chorea (SC) and compared to nine controls. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and Western blot (WB) methods were used to detect ABGA against supernatant (S1), pellet, and synaptosomal preparations from adult and pediatric postmortem caudate, putamen, and globus pallidus. ELISA optical density (OD) values were higher in SC patients than controls across all preparations, but did not reach a level of significance. Although WB identified multiple bands in all subjects, discriminant analysis showed that the mean binding patterns of SC patients were significantly different from control, most notably in the caudate S1 fraction (Wilks' λ =0.011, p