Yes,!!!!

I keep losing the portions I am most interested in - the same groups
keep coming back and I lose a question I posted -

What does

                ANTI-NUCLEAR ANTIBODIES

have to do with Lyme Disease, if anything?

Any help would be appreciated, help with this newsgroup arrangement or
help with ANA

Dee

Hi, Dee,

Non-medical person writing here, so I could surely be awfully wrong
about this, but from spending a lot of time in med libraries reading
Lyme and Lyme-related stuff, I get the _impression_ (once again, be
warned this could be a false impression) that ANA elevations are
encountered in more than one "autoimmune illness".  I bet you could
learn some interesting things from doing a PubMed search on "ANA" (or
the whole word).  Maybe you'd even report back to us. I'd be interested,
but don't have the time to do it.

Jean

Hi Dee,

Jean is correct that ANA can appear in other autoimmune illness.
It can appear in a low percentage (~5%) of healthy individuals
and varying degrees in other illness including viral, hepatic
collagen vascular disease and as mentioned autoimmune disease.
Also ANA increases with age. It's been found in some Lyme disease
patients, usually the cause is unknown but it would likely be
best to monitor the situation.

ANA (anti-nuclear antibodies) are by themselves harmless. It is
the antigen-antibody complexes that are formed that cause the problem,
such as tissue damage in Lupus. Meaning where the body is attacking
itself or recognizing it as foreign.  It is not a specific test for
SLE (a form of Lupus) but a sensitive indicator, the higher
the number the more specific. There are further tests on patterns
of ANA to rule out SLE. - Donna

Here is a comparative incidence of ANA taken from the _Professional
Handbook of Diagnostic Tests_

Healthy patient                                 ~5%
Patient 65 or older                             ~40%
SLE                                             95% to 100%
Healthy family member of SLE patient            ~25%
Lupoid hepatitis                                95% to 100%
Felty's syndrome                                95  to 100%
Scleroderma                                     75% to 80%
Drug induced SLE-like syndrome:
hydralazine, procainamide or isoniazid          ~50%
Sjogren's syndrome                              ~40% to 75%
Rheumatoid arthritis                             25% to 60%
Chronic discoid lupus erythematosus              15% to 50%
Juvenile arthritis                               15% to 25%
Polyarteritis nodosa                             15% to 25%
Dermatomyositis, polymyositis                    10% to 30%
Rheumatic fever                                  ~5%
Miscellaneous diseases                          10% to 50%      

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Lyme Disease Information Resource
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