Clinical studies of the reactivity of semm IgG from patients with Graves' ophthalmopathy with porcine orbital tissue preparations

Abstract The clinical utility of ELISA assays for antibodies reactive with a variety of porcine orbital tissue antigen preparations is described using sera from large numbers of patients. Use of such assays does not allow reliable identification of patients with Graves' ophthalmopathy (GO) due to the overlap between patients with and without eye involvement and normal individuals. In 5 6 patients showing high levels of reactivity with porcine eye muscle membrane antigen, a considerable but variable proportion of the binding was found to be species, rather than tissue, specific. No consistent pattern of change in ELISA reactivity with time was seen in studies of serum samples from patients treated medically for hyperthyroidism and patients who received immunosuppressive therapy with cyclosporin A for active, severe ophthalmopathy. Use of previously published ELISA methods using the crude antigen preparations described is therefore not likely to be of use in the routine clinical management of GO patients.