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Survivin may be helpful biomarker in patients with RA, certain alleles
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The presence of survivin in blood serum positively correlated with about half of patients with rheumatoid arthritis of Malaysian, Chinese and Indian ethnicity and was highly specific for the presence of rheumatoid arthritis, according to recently published study results.
Researchers studied survivin levels and the presence of HLA-DRB1 shared epitope alleles in 1,233 patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) from the Malaysian Epidemiological Investigation of Rheumatoid Arthritis study and 1,566 healthy individuals. Patients were either of Malaysian, Chinese or Indian ethnicity.
The researchers calculated risk for RA as odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence intervals in the participants with high levels of survivin. Additionally, risk was calculated in relation to the anti-cyclic citrullinated peptides (ACPA) antibodies detected by ELISA and HLA-DRB1 shared epitope alleles, which were identified through polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using a sequence-specific oligonucleotide method.
Results showed 625 patients with RA and 85 controls were detected to have high levels of survivin, which highlighted the biomarker’s high specificity for RA, according to the researchers.
In patients with RA and high levels of survivin, the presence of the shared epitope alleles and ACPA alone or together, survivin levels were highly specific for distinguishing patients with RA.
An association was also seen with high survivin levels and ACPA and shared epitope alleles HLA-DRB1*01 through HLA-DRB1*16, especially DRB1*01 and DRB1*04, with 45% of those patients with RA who carried the alleles positive for survivin in blood serum. An additional 42% of ACPA-positive patients with RA also had high levels of survivin, according to the researchers.
Survivin-positive participants had a 17.91 OR for having RA. Patients without the shared epitope alleles who were ACPA-negative but had high serum concentrations of survivin showed a 5.4 OR for RA, and participants with all three biomarkers had 16.21 OR for RA.
ACPA levels were high in 83% of patients with RA who were survivin-positive and in 44.7% of survivin-negative patients with RA. – by Shirley Pulawski
Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.
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