Prevalence of Anti-Nuclear Antibody Pattern-One Year Experience in a Tertiary Care Center

Autoimmunity is the failure of an organism to recognize its own constituent part as self, thereby allowing immune response against its own cells or tissues. ANA is a marker of the autoimmune process. It is positive for a variety of autoimmune diseases. The study was trying to find the prevalence of ANA in correlation with sex, age group and pattern of ANA. Current study findings show that women and elderly people are more prone to develop autoimmune disorders. The female dominance in ANA production suggests that hormonal or other factors in women play a role in this process. The intrinsic variations in the aging of the immune or endocrine systems may be the reason for ANA to be common in elderly people. Our study showed speckled pattern as the most prevalent pattern, this can be because of its less specificity. All this above mentioned criteria's should be considered while evaluating a positive ANA result.