Regular articleAnti-β2-Glycoprotein I Antibodies in Patients with Acute Venous Thromboembolism: Prevalence and Association with Recurrent Thromboembolism
Section snippets
Patients
All consecutive patients who were referred to the Thrombosis Unit of Padua University between January 1994 and December 1998 for an episode of acute venous thromboembolism were eligible for the investigation, provided that the disease was objectively confirmed according to standard methods 11, 12, 13. Patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) or lupus-like disease were excluded, as were patients with cancer, pregnant women and carriers of antithrombin, protein C or S defect, and
Results
Out of 288 eligible patients, 61 were excluded because of hereditary thrombophilia (36), cancer (20), systemic lupus erythematosus (3), or pregnancy (2). Therefore, 227 patients were enrolled in the current investigation. Laboratory determinations showed the presence of aPL and/or LA in 70 patients (30.8%): aPL alone in 44 patients, LA alone in 7, and both in the remaining 19. When considering only patients with aPL (44+19) we found a low positivity in 37, moderate positivity in 18, and high
Discussion
The results of our study strongly suggest that the frequency of antibodies directed against β2GPI in unselected patients with acute venous thromboembolism is relatively high, approaching 10% of patients. Furthermore, their presence is identifiable in approximately one third of patients who are carriers of aPL (with or without LA), specifically in those with an aPL titre >15 UPL/mL. Interestingly, in no patients of our cohort with LA in the absence of aPL were anti-β2GPI antibodies detected.
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