Immunologic Diagnosis of Vasculitis

Abstract

A variety of immunopathologic mechanisms are involved in the etiopathogenesis of vasculitis [1, 8]. Besides infectious agents and their immunologic footprints, notably autoimmune diseases, malignancies, and toxic-allergic reactions have to be considered as possible underlying causes. Numerous attempts have been undertaken to classify vasculitides, but so far none has been satisfactory [6]. A still widely accepted scheme distinguishes primary and secondary vasculitides, although new classifications according to immunologic parameters (e.g., antinuclear antibody, ANA-, or antineutrophilic cytoplasmic autoantibody, ANCA-positive, hyper-, hypo-, or normocomplementemic vasculitis) may soon prevail. Table 1 summarizes the most frequent vasculitis syndromes and some of the associated key laboratory findings. In Table 2 an attempt is made to group vasculitides into ANCA positive, ANA positive and ANCA/ANA negative ones.