Striatal antibodies in children with Tourette's syndrome: multivariate discriminant analysis of IgG repertoires.

Antineuronal antibodies have been postulated to be the underlying pathophysiology in TS and other neuropsychiatric disorders. Serum antibodies from 20 children with TS, and 21 control subjects against human striatum, globus pallidus, muscle, and HTB-10 cells were assayed by Western blot techniques. A MANOVA differentiated between TS and control blots, and a discriminant analysis demonstrated which variables contributed most to differences between groups. Prominent differences between TS and control blots were identified using striatal epitopes in contrast to similar patterns shown between groups for globus pallidus, muscle and HTB-10 tissue, supporting striatal autoimmune involvement in TS pathophysiology.