Antinuclear antibodies (ANA) react with components located in the cell nucleus and cytoplasm. Differing ANA staining patterns may reflect the specificity of
autoantibodies in sera and indicate some
autoimmune diseases specifically, to some extent. Th17-relevant
cytokines have been shown to be involved in a variety of
autoimmune diseases, but not consistently. In this study, we investigated whether differences in Th17-relevant
cytokines exist between different ANA pattern sera. Sera of 64 ANA-positive patients (12 homogeneous, 13 speckled particle, 11 nucleolar, 15 centromere, 6 peripheral nuclear) and 16 healthy donors were analyzed for
IL-17,
IL-6,
IL-21,
IL-22,
IL-23 (p19), and TGF-β, and subsequently correlations between
IL-17 and
IL-6,
IL-21,
IL-22,
IL-23, and TGF-β were analyzed. Results showed that these Th17-relevant
cytokines varied with different ANA-positive sera compared with healthy donors, except TGF-β. Among them,
IL-21 and
IL-22 were higher with all ANA-positive sera and
IL-17,
IL-6, and
IL-23 were higher with three or more ANA staining sera. No significant difference in these
cytokines was seen between the different ANA staining sera except
IL-17 levels in sera of peripheral nuclear staining positive subjects were higher than nucleolar. Additionally, in ANA-positive sera,
IL-17 correlated with
IL-6,
IL-21,
IL-22, and
IL-23, but not with TGF-β. Thus, we demonstrated that Th17-relevant
cytokines varied with different ANA staining pattern sera, suggesting that Th17-relevant
cytokines play differing roles in
autoimmune diseases.