Autoantibody prevalence in active tuberculosis: reactive or pathognomonic?

Objectives: To evaluate the autoantibody in patients without corresponding symptoms, whether these autoantibody are pathognomonic or not. We hypothesised that autoantibody may be reactive to chronic infection, such as tuberculosis (TB). Design: Randomised, case–control cohort study. Setting: A tertiary centre in Taiwan. Participants: We randomly chose 100 patients out of the data bank of patients with TB in a tertiary medical centre. All patients completed the sera sampling. We chose 100 patients according to autoantibody prevalence in previous literature. We also chose 100 medical staff as control group. Interventions: We tested anti-SSA, anti-SSB, anti-Sm, anti ribonucleoprotein, anti-Scl 70, anticentromere, anti-double-stranded DNA, anticardiolipin IgG and IgM in all patient and control groups. The clinical symptoms and the underlying disease were all recorded. Primary and secondary outcome measures: The result of sera antibody titre was recorded. For those with specific positive ser...