Adamts-13 Inhibitor Testing Is Often Negative on Initial Testing
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background: Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP) presents with microangiopathic hemolytic anemia and thrombocytopenia and is caused by severe ADAMTS13 deficiency. TTP can be the result of autoantibodies to ADAMTS13 or genetic defect in the ADAMTS13 gene. ADAMTS-13 is an enzyme that specifically cleaves unusually large von Willebrand Factor (VWF) multimers which mediate platelet thrombus formation under high shear. When ADAMTS13 is deficient, unusually large VWF multimers accumulate causing excessive platelet aggregation and thrombosis in the microvasculature. Methods: St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto is home to a large reference laboratory for special coagulation. We use a commercial ELISA Technoclone Technozym ADAMTS-13 activity assay for the determination of ADAMTS-13 activity and Technoclone Technozym ADAMTS-13 inhibitor assay to identify anti-ADAMTS-13 antibodies. We send samples to another Canadian laboratory for validation of our results as they use an in-house ELISA assay for ADAMTS13 activity and anti-ADAMTS13 antibody. Results: We performed a retrospective review of all ADAMTS13 activity tests performed by our laboratory between January 1, 2013 and June 30, 2018. The total number of tests was 466 from 203 unique patients. 24% had an ADAMTS-13 activity under 10% (N = 144) which is consistent with the diagnosis of TTP. When specimens with severe ADAMTS-13 deficiency were tested for presence of anti-ADAMTS13 antibody, 46% were negative. Four of these specimens were sent to the other laboratory and all had detectable, albeit very low titre, inhibitors. Furthermore, on repeated testing over the study period, the vast majority of patients who presented with low ADAMTS13 activity and no detectable antibody subsequently became antibody positive. Fifty-two patients remained antibody negative by our internal and send-out testing. Five of them were known to have or were subsequently diagnosed with hereditary TTP (hTTP). Only one patient continues to have negative antibody but whose clinical course is not consistent with hTTP. Conclusions: We found that a commercial ADAMTS13 (Technoclone Technozym) antibody assay is falsely negative in a substantial proportion of patients with autoimmune TTP, the majority of which likely had a low titer inhibitor, below the threshold of test detection. More sensitive assays and/or repeated testing, presumably as inhibitor titre increases during the course of the disease, may detect antibody presence in the majority of samples of patients with autoimmune TTP. This is an important finding as this could impact the types of therapies offered to patients with negative antibody screens and may also avoid unnecessary, expensive genetic testing . Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".