The universe of ANA testing: a case for point-of-care ANA testing.
Testing for total antinuclear antibodies (ANA) is a critical tool for diagnosis and management of autoimmune diseases at both the primary care and subspecialty settings. Repurposing of ANA from a test for lupus to a test for any autoimmune condition has driven the increase in ANA requests. Changes in ANA referral patterns include early or subclinical autoimmune disease detection in patients with low pre-test probability and use of negative ANA results to rule out underlying autoimmune disease. A positive result can lead to further diagnostic considerations. Currently, ANA tests are performed in centralized laboratories; an alternative would be ANA testing at the clinical point-of-care (POC). By virtue of its near real-time data collection capability, low cost, and ease of use, we believe the POC ANA has the potential to enable a new paradigm shift in autoimmune serology testing.
Division of Rheumatology/Department of Internal Medicine, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, 1 University of New Mexico, Mail Stop MSC10-5550, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA. kkonstantinov@salud.unm.edu.|Rheumatology Section, Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center, 1501 San Pedro SE, Albuquerque, NM, 87108, USA. kkonstantinov@salud.unm.edu.
Konstantin N
KN
Konstantinov
Department of Molecular Genetics and Microbiology, University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center, 1 University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, 87131, USA.
Robert L
RL
Rubin
Antinuclear autoantibodies (ANA); Electrochemical biosensor; Point-of-care (POC) testing