The clinical spectrum of patients with anticentromere antibodies

In order to define the clinical associations and diagnostic meaning of anticentromere antibodies in a random population of patients, clinical and serological findings were studied with the evolution of 16 patients selected only because of their positiveness to anticentromere antibodies, detected by indirect immunofluorescence on HEp-2 cells and confirmed in chromosome spreads of HMcB cells. The most frequent diagnosis was systemic sclerosis in 9 patients (56%) especially in its variety Limited Cutaneous Systemic Sclerosis/CREST (7 patients). The rest of the cases (44%) showed different diseases (3 isolated Raynaud's phenomena, 1 Sjogren's syndrome, 1 seronegative polyarthritis, 1 undifferentiated connective tissue disease and a probable sarcoidosis). Therefore, even tough the more frequent clinical entity associated to anticentromere antibodies was systemic sclerosis and especially its variety Limited Cutaneous Systemic Sclerosis/CREST its diagnostic specificity is relatively low. The most frequent clinical association in our group of patients with positive anticentromere antibodies has been Raynaud's phenomena, alone or associated to other processes, being found in all but one of the studied patients (94%).