Autoantibodies to neurofilament proteins in autistic subjects.

摘要

This study was undertaken to investigate the presence of antibodies reactive with neurofilament proteins in the sera of patients with autism, their household contacts (parents and siblings), healthy controls, and disease controls.; Serum samples from 39 autistic subjects, 38 parents of autistics, 26 siblings of autistics, 24 idiopathic mentally retarded subjects, and 58 healthy control subjects were examined for reactivity in immunoblots of partially purified neurofilament preparation from bovine spinal cord.; Twenty-five of 39 (64%) of the autistic subjects were reactive with at least one of the neurofilament triplet proteins. The healthy control group had 17 of 58 (29%) reactive for the neurofilament triplet proteins, indicating a significant difference in the presence of antibodies to neurofilament proteins between the two groups. Antibodies to neurofilament proteins were also detected in a significantly high frequency among the household contacts. The detection of autoantibodies to neurofilament proteins substantiates an immune hypothesis involving autoimmunity as one possible mechanism of pathogenesis in a subset of autism.; An increase in the incidence of antibodies reactive with glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) was also found in autistic subjects compared with healthy controls. Eight of 39 (20.5%) sera from autistic subjects were reactive with GFAP, while 5 of 58 (8.6%) sera of healthy controls were positive for the same reaction. This finding, upon further investigation, may provide further evidence for the involvement of autoantibodies to neural tissue antigens in autism.