Metabolic mediators determine the association of antinuclear antibody subtypes with specific clinical symptoms in systemic sclerosis

The aim of this study was to investigate the possible link between different types of systemic sclerosis-specific antinuclear antibodies, adipokines and endothelial molecules which were recently found to have a pathogenic significance in systemic sclerosis. Serum concentration of adiponectin, resistin, leptin, endothelin-1, fractalkine and galectin-3 were determined in the sera of patients with systemic sclerosis (n ​= ​100) and healthy controls (n ​= ​20) using ELISA. The following associations between antinuclear antibodies and increased serum concentrations were identified: anticentromere antibodies with endothelin-1 (p ​