A new study carried out by Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) and INOVA Diagnostics has resulted in the completion of a worldwide license agreement for new technology which could detect antibodies to carbamylated proteins (anti-CarP). For Rheumatoid Arthritis sufferers, this could be a fantastic advancement that could help with diagnoses in the future. Researchers agree that the detection of auto-antibodies in Rheumatoid Arthritis patients could help to provide an important insight into the processes which initiate and progress the condition. Since the anti-CarP antibodies can also be detected in patients who no longer have serological markers, researchers are confident that this new insight could be hugely beneficial.
New treatment options mean that it’s now possible to apply early and aggressive treatments to this condition, and understanding which patients would benefit most from those interventions could help to boost the efficiency of them. In trying to understand the disease, researchers hope to unravel how the presence of auto-antibodies like anti-CarP contribute to the condition and how novel strategies can help to prevent the onset of Rheumatoid Arthritis. Experts believe that anti-CarP technologies represent a significant advancement in the diagnosis of RA, which helps to close the serological gap which currently exists with biomarkers.
A study published last year by the team at LUMC highlighted that IgG and IgA antibodies recognising carbanylated antigens were present in nearly half of the RA patients tested. In addition to this, anti-CarP antibodies were discovered to be predictive of a more severe course of the disease when measured by a radiological progression in ACPA negative RA patients. Rheumatoid Arthritis is a debilitating disease which affects millions of people each day – a new technology which could help identify the problem earlier could be a huge benefit to many people.