Conclusions
To our best knowledge, this is the first report investigating the
content of broad spectrum of autoantibodies in therapeutics used for IRT
and their clinical relevance. We identified high quantities of anti-GAD
and anti-TPO autoantibodies in all investigated therapeutics that may be
passively transfered to the patients’ blood circulation.
Despite the fact that IRT may lead to autoantibody transfer, we found no
evidence that this mechanism would contribute to the clinical
manifestation of the autoimmune diseases, compromising the safety of
IRT. However, it might interfere with the disease diagnosis. Based on
our results, we recommend that anti-GAD and anti-TPO should not be used
for the screening or diagnosis of T1D and AIT in CVID patients on
regular immunoglobulin subtitution therapy. Instead, the measurement of
glycemia, C-peptide, gHb and thyroid ultrasound, respectivelly, may be
the screening methods of choice.