This site is intended for healthcare professionals

account_circleSign in
Go to /sign-in page

You can view 5 more pages before signing in

Detection of anticardiolipin antibodies

Last reviewed dd mmm yyyy. Last edited dd mmm yyyy

Authoring team

The earlier VDRL test using cardiolipin as antigen is insensitive. Modern procedures use solid-phase radioimmunoassay - RIA - or enzyme linked immunoabsorbent assay - ELISA.

 

  • anticardiolipin ELISA is thought to have high sensitivity but low specificity
  • a positive test is strongly associated with morbidity in pregnancy than with thrombosis (1)

Since 1990, reporting of results have been standardised and are expressed in terms of GPL or MPL units.

The risk of thrombosis or spontaneous abortion increases with the titre of aCL and are greater with IgG antibodies than with IgM - for example, of 39 patients with IgG greater than 20 GPL units, 70% had a thrombotic event.

Reference:

Create an account to add page annotations

Create a free account

Add information to this page that would be handy to have on hand during a consultation, such as a web address or phone number. This information will always be displayed when you visit this page