Immunology of antiphospholipid antibodies and their interaction with plasma proteins

Abstract

'Antiphospholipid' (aPL) antibodies are of clinical importance because of their strong association with vascular thrombosis, recurrent pregnancy loss, thrombocytopenia and other clinical manifestations like livedo reticularis, chorea and cardiac valvular disease1. While aPL antibodies have traditionally been thought to be directed against negatively- charged (anionic) phospholipids, current evidence suggests that these autoantibodies recog nise protein-phospholipid complexes or the proteins themselves2-4. A number of candidate proteins have been investigated with the two most extensively researched being β2 glycoprotein I and prothrombin.