Questions with ANA
 

Hello all,
triumphe you seem a font of knowledge to me so I'm hoping you may have some insight in this. As I said earlier, my doc said my ANA looked "good", but the auto lab system just released my results to my email showing a positive ANA of 1.80 with a "speckled pattern" whatever that may mean. Does anyone have any info relating to this or any similar results?

K8samp
 

Hi - Your Doc needs to be explaining more to you - but as I remember a positive ANA is for auto immune disease. Like I have Rheumatoid arthritis on top of all this mess - but mine is not related to my MDS - but ask them to explain to you. Do you have painful joints? Are you taking anything? Best to you.

A positive ANA on it's own does not really tell them anything and does not automatically mean you have an autoimmune disease. Even healthy people can have a positive ANA. And it tends to increase with age. Everyone has some level of autoantibodies in them.

So your doc will look at at other markers and your history to try to determine what's going on.

A viral infection and even meds can cause a positive result. And then there's a possibility of false positives.

Even with all that, I would still keep an eye on it and ask if you should be retested in a couple of months if things are not improving.

I went for a year and half trying to get answers for joint pain. It was a positive ANA that sent me to a Rheumatologist. Positive ANA went away but I continue to have a high rheumatiod factor with no clear explanation. Diagnosing really is an art form sometimes when it comes to these diseases.

When I last saw Dr. M about six weeks ago, I ask him some general questions about autoimmune disease. He then went into a lecture on the the two main theories of the cause for them. It was intended as much for his fellow, and another young doctor who was there, as much as it was for me. I couldn't quite keep up, but the two doctors later thanked me for asking the question.


He recently discovered that I have a certain mutation to my Tcells. I am the only PRCA patient to have this, and it is rare in his AA and MDS patients. It is common in 70% of his LGL patients. Forty percent of LGL patients have autoimmune diseases such as RA and lupus. Research is being done. I think they are trying to find a common link among certain autoimmune diseases.

Here is an article expanding on my prior post.

http://www.aamds.org/research-articl...lastic-anemia-