The influence of anti-cyclic citrullinated peptide on anticentromere antibody-positive rheumatoid arthritis patients

Excerpt

We read with interest the paper of Bournia and colleagues that anticentromere antibody (ACA)-positive primary Sjögren's syndrome (SS) shows a clinical phenotype intermediate between ACA-negative SS and systemic sclerosis (SSc) [1]. In our past study investigating the clinical features of 62 patients with positive ACA, only one patient had typical CREST syndrome, 9 patients had Raynaud's phenomenon (8 with sclerodactyly, telangiectasia or calcinosis), while rheumatoid arthritis (RA) was the most common diagnosis (21 patients) [2]. Thereafter, we investigated whether ACA-positive RA patients have distinctive clinical features compared to general RA patients [3] and found that the high titer group (over 1:320) was associated with Raynaud's phenomenon more often. This result suggests that RA patients are also affected by high titer ACA, similar to SS patients. …