Prediction of Sjögren's Syndrome Years Before Diagnosis and Identification of Patients With Early Onset and Severe Disease Course by Autoantibody Profiling.

Abstract

Autoantibodies are highly characteristic of primary Sjögren's syndrome (SS) and represent important tools for studying its pathogenesis. Nonetheless, thus far, no systematic investigations have assessed the presence of autoantibodies before diagnosis. This study was undertaken to analyze how early and in what order autoantibodies appear, how predictive they are of primary SS, and whether they identify disease subsets.