Effects of substrates on the indirect immunofluorescence test for pemphigus vulgaris autoantibodies

Lee, Sang Chin; Lee, Jun Young; Kim, Yung Hwan; Kim, Chung Won

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Substrates play an important role in the effectiveness of the indirect immunofluro-rescence test. The monkey eaophagus has been known to be a more reliable and reproducible substrate than any other animal substrates for detecting pemphigus vulgaris autoantibodies, but it is quite difficult to get the monkey esophagus in Korea, therefore, we tried to find other substrates which could be substituted for it.
OBJECTIVE
We studied to select the substrate which can be the most sensitive, to compare the immunofluorescent sensitivity of various animal substrates and fores,cins for detection of pemphigus autoantibodies, and finally to evaluate the effectiveness of cultured hunan keratinocytes as a substrate for indirect immunofluorescerice. METHOD: With foreskin, guinea pigs, cats, rats, dogs, rabbits and cultured human keratinocytes as substrates, an indirect imrnunofluorescence test was performed to detect pemphigus vulgaris autoantibodies in seven sera from the active patients before treatment and diluted serially from 1:10 to 1:1280 RESULT: We could detect pernphigus autoantibodies in all animal subtrates used in this study except rats and obtain good immunofluorescent results with foreskin, guinea pigs, and cultured human keratinocytes. The results were moderate with dogs, cats, rabbits, and poor with rats.
CONCLUSION
We confirm thut cultured human keratinocytes can be a good effective substrate. According to effectiveness, subtrates can be divided into three groups. Foreskin, guinea pigs, and cultured human keratinocytes are included in the good effective substrate group, dogs, cats, and rabbits in the modeate group and rats in the poor substrate group, but we can not find any superiority of substrates within each groups.