In our latest video, Mr Mende tells us how autoantibody determination completely changed his prognosis. For the past six years, Mr Mende has suffered from necrotising myositis, an autoimmune disease that mainly affects the connective tissue and muscles. Today he is treated with immunosuppressants and is doing well, but receiving this diagnosis and successful therapy did not come easy.
Mr Mende’s touching story began six years ago when his doctor noticed a rattling sound in his lungs. After numerous examinations at the pneumology department he received a devastating diagnosis: idiopathic lung fibrosis – a lung disease with no clear cause, no treatment options and a very poor prognosis.
But Mr Mende had a contact at EUROIMMUN and more blood tests were done, this time for numerous autoantibodies. This turned out to be a stroke of fortune: Rare antibodies were indeed detected, which indicated an autoimmune disease. Mr Mende was then referred to the clinic for rheumatology and clinical immunology at the University Hospital Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), where its director Professor Riemekasten diagnosed him with necrotising myositis with lung fibrosis. This rare autoimmune disease can be treated and controlled with immunosuppressive therapy, which now allows Mr Mende to fully live his life.
The important conclusion: The detection of autoantibodies allowed to initiate therapy promptly, which was crucial for halting the progression of the lung fibrosis and maintaining Mr Mende’s quality of life.
Watch our video for the full motivating story:
EUROIMMUN has more than 30 years of experience in the development of autoimmune diagnostics and offers a wide product portfolio for different test methods such as indirect immunofluorescence tests (IIFT), ELISA, chemiluminescence immunoassay (ChLIA) and immunoblot (EUROLINE). Depending on the indication, they include screening and differentiation tests as well as monospecific confirmatory tests. IIFT based on HEp cells are the gold standard for the determination of antinuclear antibodies (ANA). They allow to differentiate 15 nuclear, 9 cytoplasmic and 5 mitotic fluorescence patterns caused by autoantibodies associated with different autoimmune diseases. Multiparameter line blots such as the EUROLINE Autoimmune Inflammatory Myopathies 20 Ag (IgG) enable parallel monospecific determination of up to 20 different antibodies that are associated with different forms of myopathy, among others. With exclusive parameters and a constantly expanding portfolio EUROIMMUN wants to facilitate comprehensive autoantibody testing – for an early identification of autoimmune diseases as the cause of unexplained symptoms and for more success stories like that of Mr Mende.
Visit our website for further information on our test systems in the field of myositis diagnostics:
