Our findings indicate that anti-CEP-1 may not be able to replace anti-CCP2 for routine diagnosis for RA, but they may be helpful for subtyping of the disease.
Anti-CEP-1 antibodies are detectable in over 40% of RA patients and are associated with erosive RA and with RA-associated interstitial lung disease (ILD).
Increased anti-CEP-1 antibody titers were detected in nine out of the 15 (60%) ACPA+ pSS patients and 5 out of 12 (41.7%) ACPA+ RA patients; no reactivities were detected in ACPA- pSS patients and HC.
Data from North European rheumatoid arthritis (RA) populations has suggested a particularly strong association of gene-environment interaction between smoking and HLA-DRB1 shared epitope (SE) with antibodies to citrullinated α-enolase (CEP-1) and vimentin (cVim) peptides.
The fact that arthritis and anti-CEP-1 antibodies were induced independent of citrullination of the immunizing antigen suggests that the unmodified form of α-enolase may be important in initiating the corresponding subset of human RA.