Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UNIPROT:P02794 (ferritin)
 17,525 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Fever of unknown origin (FUO) in adults is a commonly encountered clinical problem. Treatable causes of FUO in the adult should be the primary focus of the diagnostic workup. Neoplasms have replaced infectious diseases as being the most common cause of FUO in adults, and collagen vascular diseases are now relatively rare. The most important collagen vascular diseases presenting as an FUO include Takayasu's arteritis, Kikuchi's disease, polymyalgia rheumatica, and adult juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA) (adult Still's disease). There are no specific diagnostic tests for these disorders, which commonly present as prolonged fevers that are not easily diagnosed (i.e., FUO). Adult JRA is a rare but important cause of FUO in adults. Typically, patients with adult Still's disease present with liver/spleen involvement, posi-articular arthritis, ocular involvement, and evanescent salmon-colored truncal rash. An important diagnostic finding in adult JRA is the presence of a double quotidian fever, which occurs in few other disorders. Only visceral leishmaniasis and adult JRA are causes of FUO in adults associated with double quotidian fevers. Highly elevated serum ferritin levels are the most important nonspecific diagnostic finding associated with adult JRA. We present a case of FUO caused by adult JRA presenting with diffuse polyarticular migrating arthritis, evanescent rash, and splenomegaly. The diagnosis of adult JRA was suggested by these findings in association with a double quotidian fever and a highly elevated serum ferritin level. Clinicians should appreciate the diagnostic significance of fever patterns and the diagnostic significance of elevated serum ferritin levels in patients with FUO.
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PMID:Fever of unknown origin caused by adult juvenile rheumatoid arthritis: the diagnostic significance of double quotidian fevers and elevated serum ferritin levels. 1559 97

Takayasu arteritis (TA) is difficult to diagnose because diagnostic biomarkers have not yet been established. In a previous study, we detected autoantibodies against the human ferritin heavy chain protein (HFC) in the sera of patients with giant cell arteritis (GCA) and/or polymyalgia rheumatica (PMR). The aim of this study is to evaluate the frequency of autoantibodies against HFC in TA. We established seven ELISA assays for the detection of autoantibodies against HFC. We used the full-length recombinant HFC expressed in Escherichia coli or one of six different HFC peptides as autoantigens: 1-18Aa (98.8 % purity), 19-45Aa (98.8 % purity), 52-78Aa (98.3 % purity), 79-104Aa (98.8 % purity), 105-143Aa (98.4 % purity) and 145-183Aa (98.5 % purity). We collected sera from 48 patients with TA, 36 patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), 35 patients with arteriosclerosis, 133 patients with febrile diseases, which are known to generate unspecific autoantibodies, and 50 blood donors, which served as controls. The best results were obtained using the ferritin peptides as antigens. By combining the results from the different ELISAs that detect autoantibodies against the HFC peptides 19-44A, 79-104A and 105-144A, we were able to detect ferritin peptide antibodies in 30/48 (62 %) of the TA patients. The frequency was lower than in early GCA and PMR (previous study showed up to 92 %). Positive results were observed in 0/50 (0 %) of the control blood donors, 10/36 (28 %) of the SLE patients, 4/35 (11 %) of the arteriosclerosis patients and 27/133 (20 %) of the fever patients. Considering the lack of biomarkers for TA, autoantibodies against HFC peptides could act as useful markers for TA.
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PMID:Association of ferritin antibodies with Takayasu arteritis. 2517 78