Antinuclear antibodies mitotic patterns and their clinical associations

Damoiseaux et al 1 recently reported an international consensus on antinuclear antibodies (ANA) based on 28 different patterns in order to harmonise the names and descriptions of the distinct HEp-2 indirect immunofluorescence assay (IIFA) patterns. The expert panel emphasised the clinical–serological relationships between immunofluorescence patterns and the corresponding test recommendations, rather than mechanistically testing antigen specificity (sometimes not commercially available), to provide the correct weight to the HEp2-IIFA pattern. We appreciate the great effort made by these experts. However, we found that both in the original manuscript and the online supplementary material, limited mention was made of mitotic patterns and their possible clinical associations (with the exception of the …