TY - JOUR T1 - Evaluation of antinuclear antibody (ANA) in ANA-associated connective tissue diseases JF - Journal of Clinical Pathology JO - J Clin Pathol SP - 853 LP - 854 DO - 10.1136/jclinpath-2015-202970 VL - 68 IS - 10 AU - Adrian Y S Lee AU - Andrew R Hudspeth AU - Udayan Ray Y1 - 2015/10/01 UR - http://jcp.bmj.com/content/68/10/853.abstract N2 - Dear Editor,The antinuclear antibody (ANA) test is one of the most common autoimmunity blood tests, which plays a major role in the diagnosis of several connective tissue diseases (CTDs), including scleroderma/systemic sclerosis and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE).1 We performed a brief investigation to examine the performance of ANA in ANA-associated CTDs (ANA-CTD) at one Australian teaching tertiary hospital. All ANAs ordered at the Royal Hobart Hospital pathology laboratory in a 6.5-year period from July 2008 to December 2014 were identified. July 2008 was the first point in which ANA tests were performed onsite using human epithelial cells (HEp-2) substrates and was therefore used as the starting point. Only the first episode for each patient was identified to avoid duplicates in entries.There were a total of 4500 valid ANA cases during this timeframe, with … ER -