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. 1985 Dec;48(12):1246–1252. doi: 10.1136/jnnp.48.12.1246

Acetylcholine receptor antibody as a diagnostic test for myasthenia gravis: results in 153 validated cases and 2967 diagnostic assays.

A Vincent, J Newsom-Davis
PMCID: PMC1028609  PMID: 4087000

Abstract

Anti-acetylcholine receptor (AChR) antibody was undetectable in 26/153 (17%) sera from myasthenia gravis patients assayed by standard RIA using human acetylcholine receptor. Eight of these were found to be positive with a modified protocol using a mixture of normal and denervated AChR, reducing the proportion of "negative" sera to 12%. Many of these were from patients with a short history; two such patients later developed low positive values. Anti-AChR without clinical evidence of myasthenia was found in one of three monozygotic twins of myasthenia gravis patients, and in one of thirty other first degree relatives of a further 17 patients. Anti-AChR is a valuable and highly specific diagnostic test which, with the assay used here, is positive in about 88% of patients with clinical features of myasthenia gravis.

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Selected References

These references are in PubMed. This may not be the complete list of references from this article.

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