Comparison of Screening Dilution and Automated Reading for Antinuclear Antibody Detection on HEP2 Cells in the Monitoring of Connective Tissue Diseases.

Background: Indirect immunofluorescence plays a major role in the detection of antinuclear antibodies (ANAs) and follow-up of their titers in the context of connective tissue diseases. Given the numerous unfavorable features of the conventional manual reading of HEP2 slides (need of time and expert morphologists for the reading, lack of standardization, subjectivity of the interpretation), the biomedical industry has developed automated techniques of slide preparation and microscope reading.

Methods: We collected 49 sera beforehand analyzed by the conventional reading of slides.