Journal of Clinical and Cellular Immunology
Open Access

Abstract

Human Leukocyte Antigen-G and Certain Auto-antibodies Profile in Inflammatory Bowel Disease Patients

Hammadi A Alhilali, Osama T Alobaidy and Abdul-Razzaq A Tahir

Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) is a chronic inflammatory disorder of the bowel represented by two major forms; Ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease (CD). The idiopathic nature of this disease manifests due to irregular intestinal mucosal immune-tolerance. The present study evaluates a possible genetic predisposing factor of the soluble Human Leukocyte Antigen-G (HLA-G) and estimates the auto-antibodies in the sera of a group of IBD Iraqi patients (38 with UC and 16 with CD) during Nov. 2010-Sep. 2011. The sera of the entire experimental group have been examined using commercial ELISA kits. A group of 21 apparently healthy individuals was also included as a control group in this study. The s.HLA-G and Anti-Elastase auto-antibody have found to be produced in all (100%) of CD patients compared with 18 (47.4%) and 24 (63.2%) of UC patients, for the two tests, respectively. Both assays haven’t shown positive result in healthy control sera. In addition to these two tests, the Anti-Cathepsin-G and Anti-Lysozyme auto-antibodies were found to be significantly differing in their prevalence among studied groups conferring diagnostic and differential tools. The positive/negative predictive values, sensitivities, and specificities of all tests have also been analyzed. The highest results were occurred in s.HLA-G and Anti-Elastase assays. These two factors were found to have an association with arthralgia development as an extra-intestinal manifestation among UC but not CD patients. The different expression levels of the studied parameters may aid in differential diagnosis and in following-up this group of patients.