Response to: Correspondence on "European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR)/American College of Rheumatology (ACR) SLE classification criteria item performance" by Bossuyt et al

In their letter,1 Drs Bossuyt and Meroni have used an elegant and creative approach to make use of the data on antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) of the European League Against Rheumatism (EULAR)/American College of Rheumatology (ACR) classification criteria project for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) .2 They point out that the individual ANA titre has implications for the likelihood ratio (LR) of a diagnosis of SLE. This interpretation concludes that the LR for 1:160 is just below 1 (0.94) and drops to clearly below 1 with lower titres, that is, 0.17 at 1:80, 0.08 at 1:40 and 0.02 if negative. This means that lower titre ANA actually decreases the pretest probability of SLE, important information for diagnostic considerations. These findings also reiterate important differences between classification and diagnosis. For the EULAR/ACR SLE classification criteria,3 4 the criterion, ANA of ≥1:80 ever, is used...

Source: Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases - July 13, 2023 Category: Rheumatology Authors: Aringer, M., Costenbader, K., Leuchten, N., Dörner, T., Johnson, S. R. Tags: ARD Correspondence response Source Type: research