Circulating autoantibodies in patients with acute viral hepatitis. Relation to etiology and clinical course.

The prevalences of liver-cell-membrane antibody (LMA), smooth-muscle antibodies, antinuclear antibodies and antimitochondrial antibodies were evaluated in 63 selected patients with acute viral hepatitis of types A, B, and non-A non-B. Twenty patients had a complete, uneventful recovery, 19 patients had fulminant hepatitis, and 24 progressed to a chronic liver disease. Acute-phase and follow-up sera from all patients were tested for antibodies of IgA, IgM, and IgG class. The prevalences of the IgM autoantibodies in the acute-phase sera were not significantly different in the three groups irrespective of clinical outcome. Similar prevalences were found with respect to IgG class; however, antinuclear antibodies of IgG class were predominantly found in acute-phase sera from patients who later progressed to a chronic liver disease. The diagnostic significance of these autoantibodies was stressed by the fact that 85% of the sera with LMA of IgG class and 100% of the follow-up sera with smooth-muscle antibodies of IgG class at a titer at or above 1:128 originated from patients with chronic liver disease. A similar pattern was found for antinuclear antibodies, and testing for all these antibodies of IgA anad IgM class did not yield any further information. In some serum samples LMA could be found independently of smooth-muscle antibody and vice versa, indicating the essential difference between these two autoantibodies.