Table 1.
Demographic and clinical characteristics of SSc patients (n = 71).
Figure 1.
Evaluation of serum anti-ERα antibody titer in patients with SSc and healthy donors.
(A) Anti-ERα antibodies in SSc patients (n = 71) and in sex- and age-matched healthy donors (HD, n = 90). Samples were considered positive if the optical density (OD) at 490 nm was higher than the cutoff value of an OD at 490 nm of 0.2 (broken line). The cut-off value was defined as 3 SD above the mean OD at 490 nm in healthy donors. Circles represent individual samples. P<0.0001 mean OD at 490 nm in patients with SSc vs. healthy donors (Mann-Whitney U-test). (B) Correlation between anti-ERα antibody levels and the EScSG activity index in SSc (n = 71). (C) Correlation between anti-ERα antibody levels and the percentage of circulating Treg (CD4+CD25+FoxP3+) and (D) that of activated Treg (aTreg, CD4+CD45RA− FoxP3brightCD25bright) in SSc (n = 34). The rho and P values shown in panels B–D were determined using the Spearman’s rank correlation analysis. Solid lines represent best fits as estimated by linear regression analysis.
Table 2.
Clinical characteristics of SSc patients (n = 71) divided according to the presence or absence of serum anti-ERα antibodies.
Table 3.
Demographic characteristics and immunophenotypic profile of randomly selected SSc patients, divided according to the presence or absence of serum anti-ERα antibodies, and healthy donors.