Currently I work in a clinical laboratory and have seen almost 3-4 times increase in work load of auto immune imaging by IFA and am seeing that many patterns on IFA do not really correlate with more specific testing with antibody detection with immunoblot profiles as well as EIA etc. Clinical presentations is also of not much help in associating the disease processes with patterns due to the nature of disease and propensity of presenting with myriad symptoms and signs which are associated with almost all organ systems. More over mixed patterns can also present more confusion. Another problem is association of patterns which may differ from one manufacturer to another and this may also be a cause of variable interpretation of patterns. In this scenario it is almost impossible to interpret disease association with patterns and clinical presentation.
This work has primary aim of unraveling antigen association with various disease processes and will focus on understanding how to interpret IFA patterns in laboratory, where often full details of clinical illness may not be available to pathologists.
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