Specific Autoantibody Testing in Patients With Interstitial Lung Disease

It has been well established that patients with connective tissue disease associated interstitial lung disease respond better to immunosuppressive therapy, and have a better outcome compared to patients with idiopathic interstitial pneumonias. This makes it imperative to identify this group of patients for management and prognostication. Unfortunately some of these patients do not demonstrate overt clinical manifestations of connective tissue disease and our current available autoantibody screen does not detect all potential autoantibodies present. We would like to test for specific autoantibodies in this group of patients to evaluate its clinical utility in identifying covert connective tissue diseases associated with interstitial lung disease.