My name is Tobias Stolzenberg and I am employer at the diagnostic company ORGENTEC Diagnostika.

Relating to the anti-CCP antibody test, I want to make a brief note. It’s true that these anti-CCP tests are sensitive and quite specific tests for diagnosing rheumatoid arthritis. But anti-CCP antibodies are part of a larger class of autoantibodies frequently detected in rheumatoid patients.

This class of autoantibodies is called ACPAs, what stands for Antibodies Against Citrullinated Protein / Peptide Antibodies. Recently these ACPAs as a whole have turned up as powerful markers.

The Wikipedia Encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-citrullinated_protein_antibody) and several scientific articles (I do recommend this review article, published February 2010: The use of citrullinated peptides and proteins for the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis: http://arthritis-research.com/content/12/1/203/ab... give you a fairly comprehensive overview on the topic of ACPA: history of this autoantibody class, their clinical significance, importance for rheumatology and RA diagnostics.

Best regards
Tobias Stolzenberg