FREQUENCY OF ANTINEURTOPHIL CYTOPLASMIC ANTIBODY IN GLOMERULONEPHRITIS

Introduction: Aim of the study was to determine the frequency of antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA) (p-ANCA and c-ANCA) in clinically diagnosed glomerulonephritis. Autoimmune diseases including systemic vasculitis, affect a large number of people in whom the leading cause of morbidity and mortality is glomerulonephritis that is often associated with chronic kidney disease. There are many risk factors for kidney diseases such as chronic inflammation, auto-immune diseases, immunosuppressive therapy, etc. Early phases of renal injury in autoimmune patients are clinically silent. For the detection of nephron damage, histopathological examination is gold standard but detection of antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA) can be used to find out early nephron damage. Materials and Methods: Design was analytical Cross-sectional. The study was conducted at the Department of Immunology, University of Health Sciences, Lahore in a period of November 2008 to october 2009. Study included 64 clinically diagnosed of glomeru- lonephritis. Results: Levels of ANCA (MPO and PR3) were determined by ELISA technique. Out of which four (6.25%) patients showed positive reaction to myeloperoxidase [MPO] antigen while 1 (1.56%) patient was positive for proteinase-3 [PR3] antigen. In 40-60 years of patients, sero-positivity for MPO and PR3 was 14% and 3.6% respectively. p-value for MPO and PR3 was 0.05 and 0.05 respectively. We concluded that glomerulonephritis is better related with MPO-ANCA than PR3-ANCA. Conclusion: The difference in the levels of MPO-ANCA in different age groups was significant but it was non-significant among different genders. Difference in the levels of PR3- ANCA was not significant for both age and gender.